Bear's Blog

I recently bought a doll for the first time in many years – not for my daughters this time, but for myself. Linda Thurston, an assistant in our Advanced Series who graduated last year, brought four dolls made by Scott Frazier to class. Scott, a Crow/Santee, has been participating in Linda’s Wolf Tracker tours in Yellowstone Park this past summer. Linda brought Native spirituality, with the help of Scott, into her biology tours as part of her McKay Method Graduate project. Much to Linda’s amazement, the scientists on the t...

Do you ever feel like life is moving faster than ever? The days and events fly by; you’re getting things done but you lack a feeling of pleasure from your accomplishments. Life feels dull and predictable.

In our instant world, our attention is constantly being pulled in many directions. We rarely give ourselves the opportunity to really connect the dots of our experiences to create a sense of depth and meaning. When was the last time you were truly enraptured by something, forgetting the rest of the world for a moment? I...

2012. We’ve been hearing about the significance of 12/21/12 for years as a point of shift—of consciousness? of dimensions? of the earth’s poles? Is the fate of the human race, or even the earth, in question? Now that we’re well into this process and reaching the zenith on December 21st, the true meaning is more elusive than ever. I perceive it as a five-year process; we were launched out of the box on January 1st 2010, and soon we’re going to be on the downside of the curve. What will that look like? Will things get worse...

Recently Montana State University held a symposium on the groundbreaking book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pirsig. Scholars discussed the importance of this work, the author’s life story, even the route of the trip he took on the motorcycle journey which is the central metaphor in this philosophical work. Bozeman Montana, the “high country of the mind,” plays a critical part in the book, Pirsig’s life and the development of his philosophy called the “Metaphysics of Quality.”

While teaching writin...

I finally tracked her down in the Inupiat town of Kotzebue, a village of about 3,000 people, north of the Arctic Circle on the Alaska coast. In Kotzebue, everyone knows each other and most are related somehow, so, following other’s cues, I hopped in one of the few taxis (that traversed even fewer roads) and said, “Take me to Della’s house.” When I arrived the small house was full – people were watching TV, playing cards, cooking a meal. When I asked for Della they said she was visiting someone else, and invited me to stay...