Just watched the documentary The Grizzly Man, about Timothy Treadwell, who spent thirteen summers in the Alaskan wilderness living with bears. A lot of people have criticized him for how he interacted with the bears, getting quite close, sometimes even touching them. When he wasn't in the wilderness, he gave talks about bears, trying to spread understanding of the creatures. He did this for free, sharing his amazing footage that he took in the backcountry. Treadwell was eventually killed by a bear, along with his girlfriend, Amy Huguenard. They were attacked while in their tent, the kind of attack that almost always is predacious on the part of a bear. It was very late season, during the fall, when bears are hyperphagic, eating everything they possibly can to bulk up for the winter's hibernation. Many of the bears Timothy considered his friends had begun hibernating, and his usual spot was filled with bears he was not familiar with. I think a real part of this tragedy is that the bear who ate him was killed, something Timothy would not have wanted. He longed to spend his days in the wilderness, just as the backcountry ranger of my last blog did. As did Muir, as did Thoreau.

Humans are separated from nature, especially in industrialized countries. Many of us do not know that unique and wondrous sensation of being in the wilderness, where we are a part of everything else. We're missing that entirely in the cities and suburbs. We have this illusion of being the masters of our domain. If it's raining, we go inside. If it's cold, we turn on the heat. We don't have natural predators in the city because we've killed them all off. And with this safety and control over our environment, we're missing something we once had. We're missing wildness, being part of something so much grander than ourselves. We're missing towering mountains and thundering waterfalls. We're missing the crisp, clean high altitude air and the unrushed, uncomplicated natural world. And yes, we're missing the bears.

Some of us seem to feel this separation from nature, this loss, more keenly than others. People like Alex McCandless, the hiker who walked into the Alaskan backcountry and did not return, people like Timothy Treadwell, who felt compelled by nature, enchanted by it. They were most happy when out in it, when being a part of it. Many of us feel a hole in our lives, a loss which we cannot quite find the reason for. I think for people like Treadwell and McCandless, this was healed by nature, for nature itself -- wildness -- is what is missing.

For those who have never ventured into wilderness, it is easy to imagine it a cold, unfriendly, uninviting place, and to not understand what Thoreau, Muir, or Treadwell saw in it, why they returned year after year and wrote about it so eloquently and so full of passion and heart. But once you have been out there, felt everything come together inside yourself, felt a part of it all, it is so clear and easy to see why it is utterly enchanting.

Protecting such places is vital. We need our wild places. We need the bears, the salmon, the foxes, the wolverines, for without them, true wildness is lost, and we will never get it back.