I’ve been working for some time figuring out what animals seem to inspire me in conjunction with my archetypes. I thought originally that I might have an animating animal for each archetype but I have since come to the conclusion that my animal totems are easier to see when I connect them to the four elements,earth,air water and fire. That lead me to consider what animals have always resonated with me.
As a child camping , I was always a little afraid of bears, and as a family who camped a lot we had several encounters with black bears. My Dad was always thinking about being prepared in case of a chance encounter while on a trail, so we used to do drills where my dad would leap out of the forest and chase us. It was a little unnerving but we all understood the purpose and laughed a good deal afterwards. There was one day I was sitting by the creek playing in the water and a black bear came out of the woods just a little upstream of me. I think the wind direction must not have blown him any scent of me or it was because I sat very still, in any case he did not show any interest in me but splashed through the water to the other side and disappeared into the forest.
Later as a mom who took her daughters to the zoo regularly and the polar bears were one of our favorites to visit, a polar bear swam up to the glass and looked me straight in the eye.
While starting a hike one day with friends we were striding through a meadow and I noticed how suddenly all the ground squirrels went silent!. I was at the back of the line of hikers and saw my husband turn around and start to walk back towards me rather quickly. He said there was a grizzly on the trail headed our way and we should return to the car to wait and see where he ended up. I wanted to see him so went over the rise… and there he was ambling along the trail. I did turn right around and we all walked back to the car picking up the pace as we realized how his ambling was a lot faster than we thought. Once again he was uninterested in us and took off up the mountain on the other side of the meadow so we restarted our hike to enjoy the alpine flowers.
So I really felt a bear was likely one of my animal spirits. Reading about them I was still undecided about which kind of bear it might be, and I also wondered if that mattered. But one day I was playing around with photos and my polar bear found her way into my art and into my heart. I will leave you with the finished image here and explain how she was made next time.
