The years pass and an image keep on coming back to my mind. A small group of people, travelling, makes a little fire to overnight in the forest. The night falls and all is dark but for the circle of trembling light around the burning logs. Just about outside that circle, eyes. Now and then one can see the bodies behind, the wolves moving around, back and forth, teared appart between the fear for the fire and the love for the warmth, the easy prey of a group of people just there, and the horror of being burned. Not wanting to go away, not wanting to go any closer.
The image is from Jack London’s “white fang”. It attest to a time in which men were passerby, intruders in a broad and alien world. Jack London wrote about the Yukon, where men were definitively fighting nature, not necesarilly with a great chance of winning. It was not even that long ago, say hundred few years ago.
It is hard to believe that so much has changed so fast.
My emotions are mixed. I have faced wild animals once or twice in my life, and I remember the profound alien-ness in the eyes of a predator, seeing you as prey and nothing else. I had the irrational fear that grab my guts and reminds me that is not that hard to die teared appart by the jaws of a real predator. On the other side I know, with not a little nostalgia, that such situation is extremely unlikely to happen to me, ever. I will not face a pack of wolves, or a grizzly. My body can recall the start of the fear, the knowing that I will know the horror. And also my body is sad of being in between concrete and asfalt, sourrounded by bricks and wood. We gained safety and prosperity, and I don’t quite know what we lost, but we lost something.
So I despise to visit a zoo. With more mixed feelings I attended quite a few with my son when he was growing, also teared appart between the believe that he would profit from seeing other animals that the ones that live in the city, and also the believe that seeing big animals in enclosures is not a formative experience, but a deformative one. Yet I bowed to the social pressure of zoos being nice places to bring your child, and we visited our fill.
And so, the years pass and an image keep on coming back to my mind. A small group of animals, not capable of traveling anymore, huddle together in an enclosure. The day pass and the animals are still huddled together. Just about outside the enclosure, eyes. We, people, are the ones there, moving around, back and forth, teared appart between the fear for the trapped animals and the love for seeing them so close by, the marvel of a group of predators just there to be seen safely, and the horror of the possibility of being their prey. Not wanting to go away, not wanting to go any closer.