In the Great Bear Rainforest of British Columbia, heavy autumn rains swell the rivers to capacity.   Everything drips.  Fulsome black slug-bodies glisten with moisture. Impossibly long swaths of pale green beard lichen drape in sheets from old growth cedars, testament to the deeply oxygenated air.

The time is ripe for grizzly bears to gorge on Chum salmon, beefing up for their long winter sleep.  Close to where I and 6 companions sit quietly, rain beating down on the thin wood roof of our otherwise open air platform by the river’s edge, the water surges, still rising visibly against the bank right in front of us.  It’s a treacherous spot; the river is fierce and wide at this point, nearly drowning out the sounds of rain falling, salmon splashing, gulls crying, ravens calling.  After an hour, the edges blur between me/them/us.

It’s purely hypnotic, this deep listening and sensing into what is.

In my peripheral vision, a mother grizzly silently glides into view, hugging ever so close to the bank, her two young cubs beside her.  Firmly, she presses her babes between her brown-bulk body and the bank, deftly manoeuvring beside scrub and branches along the side that give the three of them some cover and traction in the swift-moving water.   Then, lo and behold, Mother Grizzly stays in the water, hugging the bank, while her two young ones clamber up on to the small strip of land right in front of us, avoiding the deep river that could sweep them away in a flash.  Life is hazardous for young ones in all of wider Nature; even grizzly bears – but she’s an experienced mom.  She told them what to do.

The smell of wet bear-fur enters my nasal cavities.  We breathe the same air, hear the same sounds, pay attention to one another and the safety of our kin.   One cub gives a brief sidelong glance in my direction.  The field of coherence is palpable between bear and human animal.

Seamlessly, the cubs move back to their mom, continuing their glide down river, to a feeding spot in shallower water.  I feel, somehow, that my presence mattered to them, as theirs did to me.   In this moment, we’re all poignantly aware of one another, trusting in the knowledge that there is no harm here, for bear or human. 

This mothering is something I can relate to.

Unlike a lot of women, I never pined to become a mother.  Not that I didn’t want children; it simply wasn’t on my radar – until it was.  I was 39 before I became pregnant with my son and from that point on I knew firsthand the fierceness of a mother grizzly.   Life is hazardous for human young ones too, if born to mothers who lack the maturity of a guiding presence.  My own mother was one of those.  Yet mothering became the swift-moving waters that carried me across  many treacherous  way-points. 

* Interbeing is a term coined by Master Thich Nhat Hanh referring to all things being in relation to one another.