Bernie,
There may be several times we have all had a close call and never knew
it. One of the Grand Teton rangers told me about her partner who had
cross country skiied through the woods in March, when, on retracing his
trail, found he had been trailed by a grizzly. Another friend of mine,
while hunting deer, was observed by his partner on a hill to be tracked
by a cougar. Then, of course, there was the Mohave rattlesnake I
nearly stepped on in AZ. It's probably amazing we all survive the
close encounters we never knew we had.
Kevin
On Tuesday, September 5, 2006, at 10:15 AM, Wild Sanctuary wrote:
> At some point, those who have worked in the wild actually begin to
> believe in their own invulnerability. We take chances we shouldn't
> when the camera is (or isn't) rolling just to demonstrate what we
> come to believe is some super connection to the wild natural - a
> state most of us have little or no clew about despite all the bravado.
>
> Problem is that the wild natural critters - large or microscopic -
> don't much care about the human sense of the world. They've clearly
> got their own agendae as Timothy Treadwell (Grizzly Man), Jane
> Goodall (who got badly beaten up and nearly killed by one of her most
> habituated chimps, Frodo, while we were on site at Gombe recording in
> the early 90s), Dian Fossey (who didn't get iced by one of her
> beloved gorillas but as an indirect result of them, nontheless), and
> many other field researchers who have taken one chance too many and
> discovered too late the folly of their decision(s).
>
> Humans, no matter how we choose to characterize ourselves, are both
> predator and prey, and that condition is skewed not in our favor
> every time we meet the world unprepared psychologically and
> emotionally. In the forty years I've been working in the field, I've
> come within a hair's breath of oblivion on three occasions - once in
> the Arctic, once in the Antarctic, and once in Rwanda and god knows
> how many others I'm not aware of. Three lessons learned: Avoid
> arrogance, stupidity, and always remain aware of your surroundings.
>
> Bernie Krause
>
> --
> Wild Sanctuary
> P. O. Box 536
> Glen Ellen, CA 95442
> t. 707-996-6677
> f. 707-996-0280
> http://www.wildsanctuary.com
>
>
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