Modern Western industrial man has for centuries been disconnected from the cosmos - the stars and galaxies that are far out there in the universe. He has become earth-bound - what many call anthropocentric. Not so most of the indigenous people of North America and Mesoamerica (southern and southeastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, etc. Many of these people - which Western industrial man perceives as “primitive” - are closely connected to constellations of star groups.

N. Scott Momaday, one of my favorite writer-thinkers, writes In the Bear’s Home, that his name in Kiowa - Tsoai-talee - means “Rock-tree boy.” Tsoai “Rock tree” is Devil’s Tower in Wyoming (which was centrally portrayed in the story [movie] Close Encounters of the Third Kind). “That is where - long ago - a Kiowa boy turned into a bear and where his seven sisters were borne into the sky and became the seven stars of the Big Dipper (known as Ursa Major, or the major 'bear').”

When a Kiowa comes to Devil’s Tower, it becomes a portal to another dimension, another way to keep time, another way to perceives one’s existence. It’s a very big picture the Kiowa sees and enters. Yet the Kiowa does not feel small, but becomes connected to that bigness. While Western industrial man feels alienated, remote, detached to his small planet in the vastness of space. Momaday, one of the most rational and grounded beings I know about, writes “Through the power of stories and names, I am the reincarnation of that boy. From the time the name Tsoai-talee was conferred on me as an infant, I have been possessed of Bear’s spirit.”

Note that he capitalizes the word Bear. Why? “I am less interested in defining the being of Bear than in trying to understand something about the spirit of wilderness (now you know why I’m so interested in this author and person) - of which Bear is a very particular expression. Even Urset, who is the original bear and comes directly from the hand of God, is symbolic and transparent, more transparent than real, if you will. He is an imitation of himself, a mask. If you look at him very closely and long enough, you will see the mountains on the other side. Bear is a template of the wilderness.

“I am acquainted with Bear, indeed more than acquainted. Bear and I are one, in one and the same story.” So what is the close encounter of the fourth kind? The Kiowa believe that the buffalo is the animal representation of the sun. The “sun” moves around and provides a never-ending supply of provisions for life. The “sun” is then here on earth with man. It is attached to man. “Bear is the animal representation of wilderness.” Bear too is connected to man.  Momaday goes on with this theme, “There are people in the world who would not wish to be in the world, were not Bear there as well. These are people who understand that there is no wilderness without him (italics mine). Bear is the keeper and manifestation of wilderness. As it recedes, he recedes. As its edges are trampled and burned, so is the sacred matter of his heart diminished.”

When a Kiowa looks up at the Big Dipper - he or she sees much more than the various star formations that resemble the outline of a bear. He or she sees Bear! They see Bear looking down on them - and they realize that Bear - much like the literal bear with its weak eyesight - “sees beyond the edge of the world, beyond time; he watches with profound loneliness the arcing progress of his kinsmen in the night sky, curving to solstices.”

Devil’s Tower acts as a pointer outward and upward. A reminder of the necessity to look up and include the cosmos in our existence.  A reminder that we and the cosmos are interconnected.  After camping near the great monolith for four days, Momaday writes, “Ursa Major emerged on the south side of its summit, as if the two things were in the same range of time and space.  Then the constellation rode over Tsoai, descending across its northern edge...

“...I too was looking beyond time, into the timeless universe.  Shadows deepened on the monolith, and in one of them appeared Bear, rearing in some fluent alignment with Tsoai itself, huge, indistinct, and imperturbable.  I was fulfilled in some sense, neither frightened nor surprised.  It was, after all, the vision of my quest, and it was mine, and it was appropriate.  I came away more nearly complete in my life than I had ever been.” Such is the potential power of wilderness, of Bear, of bear, of developing a caring spirit for the Other, of being in a place where our consciousness can expand outward to the farthest reaches of the universe, of in fact making us whole again.  So when you use these sacred places and spaces - take responsibility for your own body wastes.  Realize their potential harmfulness to the Other.  Bring your own Packit Toilet kit - which Bear (and wilderness) will not soon forget.