hit by a car. Look at how blue the sere is.” I studied the area around the nostrils as Walt continued. “He’s young, probably one or two. This is the third peregrine I’ve seen hit by a car on the highway by Yellow Mesa. It feels like the wing is broken. Stick around; I’m about to X-ray him.”
“You’re holding the world’s fastest creature in your arms,” I said.
“Yeah, they’re amazing. They’ve been clocked at over two hundred miles an hour. I’ve seen them climb up into the sky over a duck pond so high you can’t see them, and then, when the ducks are flushed off the pond, dive down and take a duck’s head off.” Walt walked into radiography as I played with the kitten’s paws that reached out through the cage bars to touch me.
I glanced around the room to see what other interesting cases were in for the day. “Whoa, is that a fox?”
“Isn’t she sweet?” answered Dr. Jane Becker. “A couple brought her in. They swerved their car to miss her mother and bumped into her.”
Tears formed in my eyes at the sight of the beautiful fox kit. Her pointed, black nose and silver fur captivated my attention. Her deep, dark eyes looked into mine with complete calm. She seemed peaceful, reminding me of stories about the Galapagos Islands, where the first visitors found that wildlife had no fear of humans. A person could walk right up to an animal and pick it up. Only after humans started taking specimens and doing research did they become afraid. After that, the young learned from their mothers to run away. “This girl obviously doesn’t fear us yet,” I said.
“She is innocent. Of course, we aren’t handling her. We want her to stay wild. Fortunately, there’s nothing wrong with her. Unfortunately, Walt says she’s too young to know how to feed herself. I tried to tell the people to leave her where she was when they called, but they were already on the way in with her.”
People often find wildlife and think they need to rescue the creatures, but the reality is wildlife may do better without human intervention. A fawn, for example, is often left by the doe in a place to remain still until she returns from foraging. People find the fawn and take it home, thinking it has been abandoned, while the mother only went shopping and will return to find her baby kidnapped.
I felt so bad for the fox and her kit being separated that I almost cried. Without a mother, how would she learn to hunt? The people who captured her meant well, but with wildlife, we are better off letting them be. We have to remember that nature’s way is best.
I walked back to the X-ray table to check on the picture of the peregrine as Dr. Truman was reading it. “Oh, that’s too bad,” he said. “Both the radius and ulna are fractured. Usually if one is broken, the other bone acts as a splint, and the wing heals really well. But with both broken, I’ll have to do a surgical repair with a Kirschner external fixation apparatus. Then I’ll send him to the rehab center over in North Fork. They have a flight cage there the size of three basketball courts.”
The spirits in the falcon and the fox touched me. I felt some inner presence streaming from their eyes, some unnamed light flowing through them. The force from the elk that knocked me down and the force that moved my body to fight felt powerful even though they were invisible. This was the beginning of my investigation into the spiritual nature of animals.
The Beginning: Creation and the Garden Paradise
In the beginning, that is, in mythical times, man lived at peace with the animals and understood their speech. It was not until after a primordial catastrophe, comparable to the “Fall” of Biblical tradition, that man became what he is today — mortal, sexed, obliged to work to feed himself, and at enmity with the animals.
— MIRCEA ELIADE1
In countless cultures, ancient stories tell of a golden age, in the beginning of time, when people lived in peace with one another and with the animals in a garden paradise that provided abundant vegetation as food for all. The animals communicated with the people, and they understood one another. Then something happened that changed everything.
Even though the stories of humans and animals communicating seem like fables, their ubiquitous presence lends credence to the possibility that, at one time, people did indeed believe understanding was shared. Although many consider paradise myths fiction, they also have historical bases and may reflect ongoing truths about our world and our relationship with animals.
Richard Heinberg, in his book Memories and Visions of Paradise, concludes that the two — historical fact and symbolic metaphor — are intertwined. History, as a discipline, originated in myth; both are stories of our past. History exists in myth as surely as myth persists in history. Myth functions through symbolic expression belonging to the realm of the mystical rather than to that of reason.2 Myths are ways to convey universal truths, and they serve to connect the visible and the invisible, earth and heaven.3 Mythical stories invoke images we understand on a psycho-spiritual level about a nonphysical existence we lack words to describe.
Having said that, I want to make a disclaimer that applies to all the stories, religious teachings, and myths in this book. I examine these stories looking for the shared, universal Truths they contain. In fact, I find over and over again that the main difference among the world’s spiritual teachings is the vocabulary. We fear and fight each other over semantics. I too had fear of the new teachings I encountered during my investigation for this book until I opened my heart to understanding them. Then I discovered such beauty and love in the countless similarities between myth and science and religious teachings. Focusing on the common Truth is joyful and fascinating, whereas when we focus on the differences, we find reasons for fear and hate. I have no interest in convincing anyone of any particular religious belief, nor am I evaluating different myths to decide which are true and which are not. I want to explore all these stories, both to enjoy them and to learn what we can from them. To put this another way, I suggest that all these myths and teachings may share some universal Truths and may even reflect some accurate historical information, and yet none may be literally true in every respect, and I simply care not whether anyone believes any of it. There is enough drama in my job, and the study of spiritual teachings about animals has provided relief and entertainment for me. I hope you will join me in that spirit.
Once we open ourselves to the language of different stories, we understand why mythologist Joseph Campbell says that all myths are true; the psychic unity of humanity is expressed through mythology. He explains in his video The Power of Myth that myth brings us into the consciousness of the spiritual — precisely where I choose to explore. Creation stories are simply metaphorical descriptions of the indescribable. They are both metaphorical and true for the people who tell them.
Many beautiful, interesting teachings come from the past, when people used symbols of their ancient cultures. We can look at these symbolic stories and understand the Truth they convey without abandoning our religions or adopting those of others. Furthermore, we gain understanding and lose fear of other beliefs, which is what happened for me. I feel quite comfortable now entering the religious buildings and ceremonies of many different groups to share in the celebration of divine love and life because I no longer fear the unknown.
I believe it is important to say this because I am often shocked by the number of people who express intense
