culture had saturated me with a fear of bears that bordered on paranoia. At the same time, I’d encountered bears before and knew that while attacks do happen, they’re exceedingly rare. If we kept going down the trail, yes, I was taking a risk. But if I turned tail and fled, I would be sending a message to my son. It would tell him that woods with bears were scary woods. Since bears have repopulated so many rural areas, this could put him on edge the rest of his life. I know many people who are too scared to enter the woods. Nature—the dark and scary forest—so rarely gets a fair shake in fairy tales and children’s books. I didn’t want to perpetuate such misplaced fear in real life.
But I knew that fear, whether innate or learned, is a good adaptive behavior. Without it, the human race likely wouldn’t exist, as fear helped us survive predators and identify threats in the landscape. Had the infamous dodo bird on Mauritius been more timorous, the hospitable species might have been able to avoid the avarice of the Dutch sailors who, legend has it, clubbed the amiable birds with the same cooking pots they tossed them into. Through no fault of its own, the dodo never learned to fear bipedal brutes with wide eyes and empty stomachs.
American culture, in contrast, overplays the unusual. As a result, we’ve been brainwashed to fear many things in nature and all things ursine. A car accident rarely merits a news story. A bear attack, which stirs the imagination of our inner Neanderthal, demands the front page. I have a friend who, right or wrong, once grabbed his four-year-old daughter and ran upon hearing rustling noises in a blackberry patch. Today, his daughter wants nothing to do with trails and hiking. Yes, it could have been a bear. But I’ve also heard many “bears” myself that turned out to be one-and-a-half-ounce eastern towhees foraging in the leaf litter.
“What do you say, Ez?” I asked, looking down at him. “Should we keep going?”
“Let’s do it!” he said without hesitating. As he had with the snakes I’d given him years earlier, he lived on the high road.
“Okay, but be ready to shoot up a tree if I say so!” I instructed. Slowly, we continued down the railroad bed. Sure enough, two hundred yards later, we spied a large black bear sunning on a fallen log quite a distance down the hill. It was a magnificent sight, the bear utterly at peace in its leafy green world. For a while, we watched side by side, saying little. Seeing a bear from the confines of a moving car is one thing. On foot, however, there are whispers of instruction, buzzing insects, and heightened senses of being alive. Like lifting all the cages at a zoo. Sharing the moment made it that much better.
Since leaving the sun-seeking bear in the Pocono Mountains, I’ve hesitated to relay the details of our bear encounter—the decision to advance or retreat—to others. I’ve grown leery of culture-influenced, risk-averse mindsets. I’ve thought it through quite a bit, however. Yes, there were risks. But risks, I’ve realized, are greatly influenced by perception. We may not perceive the risk of riding in a car because we do it so much, but it’s still far riskier than walking in the woods. Everything I do with my son carries risk: taking him to the playground, teaching him to ride a bike, jumping on a trampoline. Even bringing him into the world was a risk. If you focus on all the things that can go wrong in these normal, everyday activities, it’s pretty scary. The flipside, however—incapacitating fear—is far scarier. In the context of healthy, long-term development and self-confidence, what’s the best road to take?
An opportune time to follow up with Emily finally came during ornithology class. We had gone on several field trips and studied lots of different birds. Emily had birded like all the others, and the fear she expressed on the first day had hardly seemed paralyzing. On the way home from a local wetland, Emily was sitting shotgun. “So, Emily,” I asked as nonchalantly as I could, “why are you scared of birds?”
“I’m not really sure,” she answered, looking out her window.
“Did you have a bad experience? Was it too many Hitchcock movies?”
Silence. Emily’s hesitation made me fear (a learned fear, of course) I’d overstepped.
After a long pause, she said, “I can’t remember, but I’m sure it was irrational. All I know is that it started when I was little.” She again fell silent, then turned to me with a wry smile. “By the way, I’m not scared of birds anymore.”
I hoped it was true. Emily’s lack of exposure to the animal world, like my brother’s, was no fault of her own. Unfamiliarity had relegated her to the low road. But Emily was no dodo. Within a few weeks of going out in the field, she’d intentionally gotten to know some of the creatures she shares a planet with. Even better, she learned to call most of them by name. To get there, all she’d needed—all any of us need, really—is a decision to take the high road.
Barred owl
Strix varia
2 • ONE SHORT OF A PARLIAMENT
There was an old man who told me when I was a boy that I should look at words like beautiful stones. He said I should lift each one and look at it from all sides before I used it. Then I would respect it.
—Kent Nerburn, Neither Wolf Nor Dog
“That’s the third murder we’ve witnessed today!” I remark to seven-year-old Ezra, sitting in the front seat of the tandem kayak we’re paddling.
“What?” Ezra asks. “What do you mean?” Of all the characteristics of kids, unbridled curiosity may be my favorite. I prey upon it. And now, I was doing exactly that.
“You mean you didn’t see that murder?” Water droplets drip from my paddle and roll down my forearm. “Well, surely you had to hear it? Listen! You can still hear it!” Ezra swivels in his seat and catches my smirk.
“You mean, the crows?” he asks quizzically.
“Yeah. Did you know that a group of crows is called a ‘murder’?”
“No.” Ezra swivels back in his seat and resumes paddling in a rare moment of thoughtful silence. He’s somewhat rankled. Like most seven-year-olds, he’d rather be teaching me than vice-versa. But his curiosity trumps all. I know what’s coming, and Ezra doesn’t let me down.
“Why?”
Despite my anticipation of the question, I have absolutely no idea. Much like a crow, I’m an inveterate scavenger. Only, I prefer to pick from the carcass of oddball natural history trivia. On one such foray, I’d stumbled upon the collective noun. Collective nouns are those that describe groupings of individuals. For people the collective pronouns, like “crew” or “party,” are kind of boring. For birds and animals, they’re anything but. How had I lived much of my life, I’d wondered on my day of discovery, without the nutrients of these nuggets? Like other collectors, I’d quickly amassed a precious horde. In my merriment, I neglected the more laborious work of figuring out why these monikers stuck.
My son had exposed my ignorance. Now I’m the rankled one. Like most proud fathers, I can’t let him know that. So I play the ignoble card and deftly redirect the conversation.
“Isn’t ‘murder’ such a cooler word than ‘flock’?” I remark. “And the word for a group of ravens is even cooler. It’s an ‘unkindness’!”
“Why?” Ezra asks again. I try one last time to dodge.
“But some group names are dumb. Do
