The Casual Blog

Last weekend I went to eastern North Carolina to look at the natural world there, and especially the black bears.  The Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge and Pungo Lake have a lot of resident bears, but earlier in the spring, I had a hard time finding them.  

This time, though, I found several.  The photos here are from that trip. I’m also sharing a few photos I made of the terrain using intentional camera movement, or ICM.  It’s a new technique for me, and I’m finding it expressive and fun.

I like bears for a lot of reasons.  First of all, they’re big and strong.  They’re rugged and resourceful.  They have hearing that is several times as acute as human’s, and a sense of smell thousands of times better.  

Usually when I see them, they are calmly eating, resting, or walking. It’s exciting to see them, but also relaxing in a way.  They live in the moment, and take me into the moment.  

They get a bad rap, though. Many people think of them as inherently menacing and dangerous.  Bear attacks on humans are very rare, and those rare attacks usually involve a human making the bear feel threatened for itself or its cubs.  A lot of our fears are exaggerated.

That said, it’s wise to treat bears with a lot of caution.  I’m continuing to study their habits, including body language and noises, to anticipate when they might be unhappy and to keep in mind what to do in case of a rare attack.    

For example, on this last trip I watched a couple of young bears amble through a field and into the woods fairly close to me, but on the other side of a canal.  In the woods, I heard what sounded like scratching on trees and belches.  I got a little closer, and heard a loud snorting sound that I wasn’t familiar with.  I thought it could be a warning, so I went on my way.  

As I bumped along the sandy road looking for wildlife, I noticed some wildlife that seemed to be interested in me – insects.  When there are a lot of bugs, I usually keep the windows closed.  But since I wanted to listen for birds and other creatures, I decided to risk opening them, and sure enough, the bugs buzzed in.  Most were bees, which I was glad to see in a way, since they are not doing so well as a species.  Once they explored the car, they flew out again, and I got no stings or bites.  I realized I’d been carrying around some unjustified anti-bug prejudice.

More and more, I find reading a lot of the news is not conducive to my mental good health.  Much of ordinary journalism seeks to attract attention with the unusual and alarming, and often leaves me feeling unsettled and unhappy.  Happily, there are exceptions, and the wonderful Margaret Renkl is one.  She writes a regular column in the New York Times about, among other things, the flora and fauna in her backyard.

Renkl’s column this week was particularly fine.  She focused on the joy of watching young animals as they enjoy their lives.  In concluding, she wrote,

I’m not anthropomorphizing here. To understand that we all exist in a magnificent, fragile body, beautiful and vulnerable at once, is not to ascribe human feelings to nonhuman animals. It is only to recognize kinship. We belong here, possum and person alike, robin and wren and rabbit, lizard and mole and armadillo. We all belong here, and what we share as mortal beings is often more than we want to let ourselves understand. We all have overlapping scars.

I think the ever-present threat my wild neighbors live with must tell us something about the nature of joy. The fallen world — peopled by predators and disease and the relentlessness of time, shot through with every kind of suffering — is not the only world. We also dwell in Eden, and every morning the world is trying to renew itself again. Why should we not glory in it, too?

In addition to the joy of being in nature, I’ve been enjoying being in my Subaru Forester Wilderness, which I’ve named Goldie.  This is good, because these trips involve a lot of driving.  I’ve been listening to audio books, and have recently found some that are engaging.  I’ll mention just one:  Bach and the High Renaissance, by Robert Greenberg.

Greenberg’s work is part of the Great Courses, which are college-level lectures on various subjects.  I get them through a subscription to Audible, which keeps the otherwise high cost manageable.  I’m about two-thirds through Greenberg’s Bach course, and it is exceptionally good.

The music of J.S. Bach (1685-1750) has been a treasured part of my life since I was a young fellow, and I’ve explored it both as a pianist and a listener.  But Greenberg has helped me understand it in much greater depth.  His lectures include interesting biographical facts, but the real meat of them is explaining what Bach was trying to do, and how he went about doing it.

For example, Greenberg views Bach in part as a brilliant synthesizer of various national styles, including Italian, French, and German.  He highlights Bach’s own study of the music of others, including both contemporaries and prior generations.  He also shows how Bach’s innovations influenced music into the nineteenth century.

Greenberg’s lectures are lively and leavened with humor.  He shares recordings of some of this great music, and explains what is happening, and why it works.  I found some of the recordings not so great in sound quality and interpretation, but in a way they illustrate the point that this music is practically indestructible.  

Anyhow, I know that Bach and classical music are not everyone’s cup of tea.  But for anyone with some interest, Greenberg is an excellent point of entry.  I wish I’d had it when I was getting started – it would have made my appreciation of this great music even greater.