Bear (Mukwa) medicine ...
Introspective.
Intuitive.
Dreaming.
Still.
Meditative.
Seeking.
Loving.
Connecting.
... and eating.
Showing posts with label Mukwa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mukwa. Show all posts
21 February 2026
23 January 2026
Vigor.
Times have changed. We have seen the passing of the blackjack and the accordion. Few of us sing alone on our porches on summer evenings, watching the sexual dance of fireflies in the burdocks beside the barn. The buzz of the airport metal detector is more familiar than the sound of the whippoorwill or coyote. The world gets to you with its big, heavy, sharp-toed boot. We are either “getting ready” or “getting over.” Our essential and hereditary wildness slips, crippled, into the past. The jackhammer poised daily at our temples is not fictive, nor is the fact that all the ceilings have lowered, and the cold ozone that leaks under the door is merely a signal that the old life is over. There is a Native American prophecy that the end is near when trees die from their tops down (acid rain).
To be frank, this is not the time for the “less is more” school when it comes to eating. The world as we know it has always been ending, every day of our lives. Good food and good cooking are a struggle for the appropriate and, as such, a response to the total environment. Anyone who has spent an afternoon in New York has seen the sullen and distraught faces of those who have eaten julienned jicama with raspberry vinaigrette and a glass of European water for lunch.
But let's not dwell on the negative, the wine of illusion. You begin with simple truths in food: for instance, peeling sweetbreads is not really exercise. When you're trimming a two-pound porterhouse, don't make those false, hyperkinetic motions favored by countermen in delicatessens. Either trim it or skip trimming. Eat the delicious fat and take a ten-mile walk. Reach into your memory and look for what has restored you, what helps you recover from the sheer hellishness of life, what food actually regenerates your system, not so you can leap tall buildings but so you can turn off the alarm clock with vigor.
Jim Harrison, from Just Before Dark
12 October 2025
Vigor.
Times have changed. We have seen the passing of the blackjack and the accordion. Few of us sing alone on our porches on summer evenings, watching the sexual dance of fireflies in the burdocks beside the barn. The buzz of the airport metal detector is more familiar than the sound of the whippoorwill or coyote. The world gets to you with its big, heavy, sharp-toed boot. We are either “getting ready” or “getting over.” Our essential and hereditary wildness slips, crippled, into the past. The jackhammer poised daily at our temples is not fictive, nor is the fact that all the ceilings have lowered, and the cold ozone that leaks under the door is merely a signal that the old life is over. There is a Native American prophecy that the end is near when trees die from their tops down (acid rain).
To be frank, this is not the time for the “less is more” school when it comes to eating. The world as we know it has always been ending, every day of our lives. Good food and good cooking are a struggle for the appropriate and, as such, a response to the total environment. Anyone who has spent an afternoon in New York has seen the sullen and distraught faces of those who have eaten julienned jicama with raspberry vinaigrette and a glass of European water for lunch.
But let's not dwell on the negative, the wine of illusion. You begin with simple truths in food: for instance, peeling sweetbreads is not really exercise. When you're trimming a two-pound porterhouse, don't make those false, hyperkinetic motions favored by countermen in delicatessens. Either trim it or skip trimming. Eat the delicious fat and take a ten-mile walk. Reach into your memory and look for what has restored you, what helps you recover from the sheer hellishness of life, what food actually regenerates your system, not so you can leap tall buildings but so you can turn off the alarm clock with vigor.
Jim Harrison, from Just Before Dark
08 December 2024
17 June 2024
06 February 2024
Mukwa.
Bear (Mukwa) medicine ...
Introspective.
Intuitive.
Dreaming.
Still.
Meditative.
Seeking.
Loving.
Connecting.
... and eating.
10 June 2023
Pleasure.
Years ago in a high green pasture near timberline I watched a small black bear on its back rolling back and forth and shimmying to scratch its back, pawing the air with pleasure, not likely wanting to be anywhere or anyone else.
Jim Harrison, from In Search of Small Gods
15 April 2023
Happy Birthday, Leonardo
Leonardo, Head of a Bear, 1480
Observe the light and consider its beauty. Blink your eye and look at it. That which you see was not there at first, and that which was there is there no more.
Leonardo da Vinci, born on this day in 1452
07 August 2020
15 May 2020
29 April 2020
27 March 2020
23 March 2020
03 March 2020
27 February 2020
27 December 2019
23 December 2019
25 June 2019
Grace.
Remaining as close to wild as possible, Peacock lives out in the big empty of Montana and has been observing, tracking, and documenting brown bears in their natural habitat for 50 years. After serving as a Green Beret medic in the Vietnam War, he returned to the States struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, and the wilderness became his haven. “I was naïve and stupid and the bears gave me grace and tolerance. They didn’t chew my ass off which is what they should have done,” he says. “Instead, they saved my life.”
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The trailer for Grizzly Country ...
Humility.
In grizzly country, humans are put in their proper place—you are not the dominant creature on the landscape. It’s a matter of getting yourself outside yourself. Your senses are forced outward. You see better. You smell better. It’s not yourself which is the center of the universe. It’s an enforced humility.
Doug Peacock
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06 April 2019
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