Bear Cans--My Sierra safe deposit boxes of calorie cache

 

Kotwa Project: The Circus of Destruction

Each night embedded with wilderness Rangers (on two 8 day ‘tours’ into the back country) A ritual is performed by all, when every trace of food, garbage, insecticides, lotions and pharmaceuticals are packed into each members ‘bear can’ for the night—Cans that are presumed to be indestructible vessels that bears can play with till they grow bored or frustrated with prior to abandoning your calorie cache unconsumed. 

The nightly positioned cache of cans is one point on the ‘Bear-Muda-triangle’ ranger jargon for the recommended 100-foot per side layout of sleeping camp, cooking area and bear can cache. (An abstract ideal I rarely saw employed)

Gni Gnah Loof, added to this ritual, and to the cache, for ‘Gni Gnah Loof’ carried three bear cans instead of one in his oversized pack-- one with his food, one containing a wind chime cut off from the wind, and a super-sized can with an accordion within. Each night these three cans are added to the camps cache. Gni Gnah Loof performs a slow ‘dance’ just beyond the post dinner 'cook site' conversation each evening on the trail .

Gni Gnah Loof,  tips and rolls the accordion can as a bear might—these manipulations enacted in slow motion  elicit the long tones of accordian  expansion and closure--these are accompanying  an under the breath incantation that Gni Gnah Loof resights requesting that bears do not turn themselves into fools.

Bear look at the food I have 'brung', my wild ways I have long forgotten.

Bear, look how clownish I am, being an accordion playing bear, boxing in a rigged match, 
see how I am a fool 

Begging for buckets and twirling batons

Bear, look how clownish I am, being an accordion playing bear, boxing in a rigged match, 
see how I am a fool. 

Trading to forage for instant raisins in porridge

Bear, look how clownish I am, being an accordion playing bear, boxing in a rigged match, 
see how I am a fool. 
Rub a dub dubbing my mouth soap bubble up my snout

Bear, look how clownish I am, being an accordion playing bear, boxing in a rigged match, 
see how I am a fool. 
These Ramen noodles making me a pet poodle

Bear, look how clownish I am, being an accordion playing bear, boxing in a rigged match, 
see how I am a fool. 
Rolling all cutely for M&M booty.

Bear, look how clownish I am, being an accordion playing bear, boxing in a rigged match, 
see how I am a fool. 
Spastic on the ground turning  barrels round round

Bear, look how clownish I am, being an accordion playing bear, boxing in a rigged match,
 see how I am a fool. 
Popping jellybean perscriptions 'till my eyes are a-spinning

Bear, look how clownish I am, being an accordion playing bear, boxing in a rigged match, 
see how I am a fool. 
Tangled in licorice whips a dope fiend with only one wish

Bear, look how clownish I am, being an accordion playing bear, boxing in a rigged match, 
see how I am a fool. 
Entertaining humans by gobbling creams of their grooming

Bear, look how clownish I am, being an accordion playing bear, boxing in a rigged match, 
see how I am a fool. 
Dancing for trail mix that makes the gut sick

Bear remain wild, wary is your lucky charm never buy the ad mans jingle.

Lick under stones the orange ants I have forgotten

Bear remain wild, wary is your lucky charm never buy the ad mans jingle.

Shake oaks for acorns I have forgotten

Bear remain wild, wary is your lucky charm, never buy the ad mans jingle.

Claw rotted brown logs for fatty grubs I have forgotten

Bear remain wild, wary is your lucky charm never buy the ad mans jingle.

Suckle tiny violet flowers, I have forgotten

Bear remain wild, wary is your lucky charm never buy the ad mans jingle.

Devour the geometry of mushrooms I have forgotten

Bear remain wild, wary is your lucky charm never buy the ad mans jingle.

Graze green meadow flavor I have forgotten

Bear remain wild, wary is your lucky charm never buy the ad mans jingle

scratch down to roots I have forgotten.

Bear remain wild, wary is your lucky charm never buy the ad mans jingle

Snap hopper bodies I have forgotten

Bear remain wild , wary is your lucky charm never buy the ad mans jingle.

Crunch the carrion marrow I have forgotten

Bear remain wild, wary is your lucky charm never buy the ad mans jingle.

Dig yellow jacket treasure I have forgotten

Bear look how hungry I am, what a Clown I have become, my wild ways I have long forgotten.

 Kotwa project: Moonlight Kitchen

Action and incantation are offered as a ‘medicine bundle’ aimed to protect both the wildness of bear diets and the safety of human calories. In sixteen nights performing this ritual no bear touched any of our party’s food or equipment—while other tour teams adjacent to our locations reported bear incidents inclusive of shredded tents, partially consumed backpacks, a chewed up two way radio and ingested hand lotion.

NOTES: I had began thinking about accordions early when thinking about  the compaction of soil in camp sites—the mournful squeeze of our burden on the breath of a site, how I might give voice to the mute voice of soil over tread upon.

The bear I defend against with plastic can I secretly root for – Could I collaborate with this most wild thing--in fantasy we bear and I would create together…bear wrestling with  the circus cans like kids with presents.b As I worked this thread it became clear that if I were successful it would mean I had afflicted my own estrangement from wilderness being upon my bear collaborator –my almond joy bar in bear can was a typhoid Mary’s Kleenix to the bear out there—my Wasa-Krisps the seat to the unseating of a wild bear--the first cause of a cause and effect chain that had already tamed and destroyed most of the worlds wilds, and done so to my kinds (human) benefit. I began to feel an earth alien and hoped to arrive by way of benevolent spaceship.The only ethical action being  the failure of the overture for inappropriate interaction.

I began to script a hope-- without religion 'a prayer' for the non encounter – yet one that still contained my wish for the risks and possibility of real contact.

Actors entertain! Bring on dancing bears for my flashing camera…let them serenade me. Provide me the raw ingrediants for my souvenir story of heroic adventures—Sing for your super bear! Beg me to assign poetry to your perfection. Please perform as salavating brute , then as cutie pie furry  eight foot tall toddler, or perform a greatful winnie the pooh smacking lips and gazing  my way with thankful eyses -Perfect bear is what I received, a bear  away in the woods roaming with indifference possibly miles away from my cheddar cheese and dried pineapple rings--away with the rock and  them without need of my kind. There will be no colaboration  only an unhealthy overture. Be wary bear—replaces beware of bears— this is KOTWA spirit and catalyst for Kotwa and the circus of destruction emerged.


the following images codify the musical circus bear

As it turned out  in the mountains only I played the accordion in the barrel, only I wrestled with these circus cans filled with curried beef, olive oil and parmesan pastas that I had hauled heavily into wilderness-ness. The difficulty of the overture coupled with its rejection have ramifications and then implications these are the content of the project

No shredded satins, resulted, no mouth sculpted plastic was made, no two way exchange or ingested hand lotion occurred—it is the bear absent that is the work--and this is success and not as sour grapes – my prayer was  fulfilled.  There is also disappointment I artist and you the would be viewer alike would prefer to see the bear hear his  ironic composition of inqury—If you, like my ‘other self’ long to see bears tossing musical cans about allah Nirvanna—if you’d buy the Bear songs mp3 as a girl on the trail told me she'd certainly do—then we are alike. And we have  adverted success. This is KOTWA--an act, of offering—for we are keepers of the wilderness act, not exploiters of wilderness residents.

KOTWA ritual implemented places our entertainment, pleasure, pride, finances and ego well behind our love of these last shreds of a once continuous wilderness and our unimposing presence among the remains

Kotwa Project: Gni Gnah Loof performing: The longing for dreams