panther – Karen's New York Love Affair

Dreaming the cougar

It is time now to finish the story of the medicine walk and apprenticing on the CA Fall Fast last October. The night before the fasters were due to return, I had a powerful dream. The dream showed me that something had shifted in my psyche as a result of the healing work I did on the medicine walk.

I dreamt I was in a forest, in a ravine with a wood log overhead that bridged the lower place. Suddenly a stream of animals started running by overhead—wild animals, like mountain goat, rabbit, maybe fox or coyote, deer… I didn’t see them all clearly, but felt it was a gift to see them so close. I wanted them to stay with me longer. (Remember the video I described in the post entitled Mixed media and more sex for the New Year? It had a very similar stream of animals, running from a forest fire. Amazing!)

Then I realized the animals must all be running from something, and the only thing it could be was a mountain lion. Then I saw the mountain lion. It was walking around coolly and calmly, and it was stalking me!

Now the mountain lion and I were in a more open space, by the ocean, near where the forest was. It was still forested, with some trees on a peninsula. The mountain lion was after me, but suddenly I was the mountain lion and it had changed into a man and I was taking huge bites out of his legs and chest. I sank my teeth in and the flesh bled—deep and big bites, but I didn’t bite all the way through or tear the flesh. It felt really good to sink my teeth in and bite like this. Wow!

When I woke and reflected on the dream, I remembered a dream I had back in 2007 when I first started working specifically with anger with a naturopath (after a short relationship ended because my anger scared the man I was involved with). In the earlier dream, I had gone to a doctor in a hospital for some healing, and she pulled a limp cougar out of a garbage can. She was going to use some of its life energy to heal me, but I knew it was a crime to keep the cougar half-dead and use its energy this way. (For more about this dream, see the blog entry Cougars: Spirit Guides on the Vision Fast.)

Now the mountain lion of my psyche is very robust, alive, and powerful. All are afraid of it, and it is me. I wonder if this is connected to the balls I claimed on the medicine walk, stepping into my masculine energy, power, and ability to look after myself. I am no longer stalked—I am the stalker. Bear in mind that this is not literal! But what I take from the dream is that like the cougar, I have stepped into my true nature more fully. It is in the cougar’s nature to bite its prey. And in the dream it was in its full power—no longer vampirized as a source of life energy.

I do feel the currents of this shift in my daily life. I feel a more consistent sense of having all the resources I need within me, accessible to me, available when needed. Together with this is a sense of completeness, so there are more elements of my nature available than just the strength or power—there is also love, compassion, contactfulness. The challenge, as always, is how to bring these gifts to my people. How to embody the qualities of my true nature as I act in the world.

In addition, my current task is still to keep working with the anger that arises from time to time. To know that it is not the deepest truth about who I am. To know that acting from an angry place will scare others and make them want to run from me, like the animals fleeing from the cougar in the dream. To temper the power and strength with compassion for others. I have finally come to see, somewhat reluctantly, that speaking or acting from the angry place is just not constructive. There are more skillful means available to me. I will keep you posted about how well I learn to wield them! I am still learning the difference between assertive and aggressive.

I start a new technical writing contract on Monday, and I pray that I handle any opportunities for learning that may arise with skill and grace.

Wild neighbours: cougars and their ways

At Monkey Valley, we place a strong emphasis on keeping retreat participants safe. One of the ways to do that is helping people learn about the wild animals that live in the area. I’ve written extensively about cougars on this blog, to tell you the story of how I learned about cougars and why I feel it is safe to be out and about at Monkey Valley when there might be cougars in the neighbourhood.

For some reason, this has been a very popular topic for spammers! And with readers, too. I think we are all fascinated by the magnificent cougar. If you are planning to come to Monkey Valley and would like to read up on cougars, here is a summary of the entries about cougars and their ways:

Cougars: spirit guides on the vision fast

When you are on a vision fast or medicine walk, you enter into a mystical realm where all events and encounters take on a significance that is bigger than what most of us experience in ordinary waking life. During this time, an encounter with an animal is not just a coincidence. (If it ever is!) Usually a particular animal will appear to you with a message or lesson that only that animal can bring. And of course, the circumstances of the encounter will help you to understand more about the message or meaning. Also your own history, belief system, and connection with particular animals will help you to know what the animal is saying to you. Therefore, the information provided here about cougars is a possible starting point, but may not touch on the fullness of what a cougar means to you, or the gifts that your own encounter with a cougar may hold.

Ted Andrews, author of Animal Speak: The Spiritual and Magical Powers of Creatures Great and Small and many other books, is my favourite source for reading about the significance of animals in different mythologies. Ted says that the cougar symbolizes coming into your own power. This is easy to see, given that the cougar has the many powers described in other postings: physical strength, leaping ability, power of hearing and sight, stealth, beauty. Ted writes, “If cougar has shown up in your life, it is time to learn about power. Test your own. Most young cougars learn how to use their power through trial and error. It strengthens them and hones their skills. When cougar shows up as a totem, much of the trial has been worked through. Now it is time to assert.”

One of the things I like about Ted’s writing and understanding of the animal world is the connection between predator and prey. Given that the main prey of the cougar is the deer, which symbolizes gentleness (including a gentle beckoning into new adventure), the deer is also significant in understanding the message of the cougar. Ted suggests that in learning to use our power, we can do so with the gentleness of a deer, when that is appropriate. This is a lesson I keep needing to learn! The cougar knows with decisiveness when to attack forcefully, but its prey teaches us that we can also exercise power with gentleness.

One thing that sometimes prevents us from showing, owning, and using our power, is the fear of loss of those who will not approve of or like it. I would suggest this might be especially challenging for women, who are socialized to appear weak and helpless. Cougar medicine can help all, male and female, to assert ourselves, show our capabilities, grow and stretch. And this means risking upsetting those around us, who may want us to stay the same. Are you willing to risk loss to realize and express your true nature? This is a question cougar asks.

Recently I was seeing a naturopath to learn to balance my power and weakness. My strength was distorted into outbursts of rage, which covered up feelings of helplessness. When we explored the animal that I identified with in these situations, it was the cougar. I felt that I had the wild, magnificent power of the cougar, but I was repressing it because I felt those around me would reject me if I showed this strength. I had a dream during this time, in which I was in a hospital room, awaiting surgery. The doctor came in, and pulled a limp cougar out of a dustbin, where it was covered with grey dirt and garbage. There was another similar bin in the room, containing another cougar. I knew the doctor was going to use some of the cougar’s life energy when she operated on me. The cougars were being kept in these bins for that purpose. I was shocked and horrified that this is what I was doing to my wild, fierce, free true nature; I was keeping it in a bin, covered with garbage, and just allowing the tiniest portion of it out to sustain my life. This dream made me wonder what it would be like to allow the cougar out of the dust bin. To allow her the fullness of her expression in my life. This question is intimately related to my spiritual journey of expressing the mystery of my true nature as I live in this world. How can I know this mystery, and learn to express it? The dream has only awakened questions, not answers. But it is clear to me that the cougar is speaking to me to set me on the path to exploring these questions.

If you are ever out on a vision fast and a cougar comes to visit you, know that it is a rare and remarkable gift. While remembering the information about how to survive a cougar attack, also try to open into communication with the cougar. Observe everything about the cougar’s physical relation to you: direction of approach and leaving; what the cougar does around you; whether you can sense a feeling-tone coming from the cougar; or even hear the words or thoughts of the cougar. In the sacred space of the vision fast, it is unlikely that the cougar has come to harm you. More likely it has come to teach and to give you a gift and a wonderful story for your people.

Cougars: fun physical facts

“Puma, cougar, catamount; Felis concolor, the shy, secret, shadowy lion of the New World, four or five feet long plus a yard of black-tipped tail, weighs about what a woman weighs, lives where the deer live from Canada to Chile, but always shyer, always fewer, the color of dry leaves, dry grass.” Thus writes Ursula Le Guin in “May’s Lion,” a story in Sisters of the Earth.

An adult cougar weighs between 90 and 200 pounds! Including the tail (which is counted as part of its body length, oddly enough—at least, this seems odd to a vertical bi-ped with a mere vestigial tail), a cougar can measure 6½’ – 8′ in length. This is a big cat! But if you take off the tail length of 2 – 3′, it is a mere 4½’ – 5′ in length.

Part of the problem for me is that the oft mentioned Mammals of British Columbia, which I consult for my animal facts, provides all its measurements in metric, so it has been hard to figure out how big the cougar really is. I hope these imperial conversions will help you avoid the same confusion! (Unless you are under the age of 40, in which case it is no help at all.)

The cougar’s perfected, low-energy hunting method is to ambush prey from a tree or ledge, attacking from behind and biting the neck. They hunt by day and night. Cougars prefer to avoid humans, and likely will hear you and vanish long before you come into contact with them. The exception is young cougars, who haven’t yet learned to avoid humans and still have the curiosity that comes easiest to the young.

Cougars live where deer, their main diet, are abundant. Usually they need about one deer a week to survive. In the winter, if a carcass freezes before they get a second feeding, they can starve to death. Their teeth are not made for biting frozen food. In addition to deer, cougars eat sheep, goats, elk, moose, American beavers (a mammal unrelated to the famous aquatic Canadian beaver!), mice, rabbits, birds, bobcats, porcupines (!), and domestic dogs and cats. In the winter, they will prey on other animals that have been weakened from starvation. In a pinch, they will eat insects too.

Young cougars become independent of their mothers anywhere from one to three years of age, during late spring or summer. These young cougars might need to roam for a long way to find unoccupied territory. This is the time when they are most likely to come in conflict with humans. Tracker Barbara Butler has seen tracks of two cougars side-by-side, and reports these were likely the tracks of two den mates who had just left home and set out into the wild world together. Otherwise, it is unusual for two adults to travel together.

Barbara also writes, in Wilderness Tracks: How to Sleuth Out Wild Creatures and Wayward Humans, that cougar leaps of up to 47 feet have been reported! They track their prey to within about 30 feet, if not waiting in ambush, and then give a short burst of speed for the attack. However, they can’t outrun a deer for very long. They have very keen hearing, sense of smell, and eye sight, and can hear prey a mile away! They can swim a mile, too! Cougars have been known to live up to 18 years in the wild.

The physical characteristics described here overlap with and influence the mystical and spiritual qualities that cougar can teach us… (to be continued)

Cougars: sign of the cat

When you are out in the wilderness, it is helpful to know the signs of the cougar, which might tell you that the cat has been by recently, and could still be in the area. This information can be helpful for self-protection, but it is also interesting for its own sake, to be able to understand and interpret the clues in nature.

Cougars leave the same types of signs as many other animals: scat, marks on trees, and tracks. A cougar might also leave uneaten food lying around for a while. Depending on the size of the animal it has killed, it might take a few days for a cougar to consume the entire body. The cougar covers its food cache with a thin layer of dirt and leaves. If you ever find such a cache, you might want to leave the area immediately, as it is very likely the cougar is nearby. But perhaps take a minute or two to look for signs of the kill, such as blood on the ground or drag marks. The cougar will also mark the cache by leaving the scent of its urine nearby, scratching up dirt to cover the urine.

Cougar claw marks on trees are a rare and precious find. With territories as big as 100 square miles or more, the chance of finding the tree a cougar has scratched is smaller than finding a needle in a haystack! Cougar scratch marks can be as high as six feet from the ground, or lower down. Sometimes cougars will use the same tree several times, so there could be multiple sets of claw marks. According to Barbara Butler, author of the fascinating book Wilderness Tracks: How to Sleuth Out Wild Creatures and Wayward Humans, the spaces between cougar claw marks are narrower than those of bears. However, this isn’t that helpful unless you are familiar with the width of the space between bear claws! Barbara luckily provides some additional information: the fore print of a cougar is 3.5″ wide, versus the print of a bear, which is 3¾ – 4″ wide. Ian Sheldon and Tamara Hartson, in Animal Tracks of British Columbia, provide a bigger range: 3.3 – 4.8″ width for cougar fore prints, versus 3.8 – 5.5″ for black bears. Clearly, there could be quite an overlap, making identification based on the claw marks alone unreliable.

However, there are usually other signs nearby for the watchful tracker. Cougar scat is often composed of chunks of dense whitish matter, about the size of charcoal briquettes. There is usually a lot of fur in the scat. Whereas bear scat is usually a big pile or several pieces of looser material, ranging from blackish to reddish, depending on what the bear has been eating. In the later summer and fall there will be lots of berries in bear scat. At other times grass and twig bits are more common.

And then there is the track itself. It is easy to distinguish between a cougar print and a bear print if the print is clear. Look for animal tracks in mud, soft sand, snow, or bare dirt. Bear rear foot prints look almost like a human foot print, longer than wide, with tapered heel, and often all five toes displaying clearly, with the claw mark well in front of the end of the toe. Cougar prints are roundish in shape, with four toes, and the claws seldom show. Barbara says that cougar claws register about 5% of the time.

I took this picture of a cougar track beside the barn at Monkey Valley, a few springs ago. I spent quite a while looking around the area nearby, but didn’t see any other signs of the cougar. The hind print is slightly smaller, almost registering over the front print in this example. It seems the cougar must have had its thick winter fur on, obscuring some of the details of the print, such as the front lobe, which is usually clearly divided in two, and the toe prints. Here the front middle toes have blended together. Notice that the prints are wider than long… (to be continued)

Cougars: planning for an encounter

Just kidding! A little hubris was creeping in there…

Even if the chances of a cougar encounter are very remote, and the likelihood of an attack even slimmer, we must all be aware that the possibility exists, and prepare ourselves with a plan for what to do.

Children: Remember, most cougar attacks have been on children and youths under the age of 16. Cougars are especially drawn to small children, perhaps because their high-pitched voices and erratic movements make them harder to identify as humans and not prey. So keep your kids close by, and if you encounter a cougar, pick small children up off the ground immediately.

Adults: If you meet a cougar while hiking or working in cougar country, follow these guidelines:

Never approach a cougar. Normally they will avoid a confrontation, but they can be dangerous when protecting their young or their food. All cougars are unpredictable.
Leave the cougar an avenue of escape.
Face the cougar and remain upright.
Back away slowly. Do not run or turn your back to the cougar.
Stay calm. Talk to the cougar in a confident voice. “Good kitty, that’s a good kitty…”
Make yourself as big as possible. Pick up sticks or branches and wave them about. Raise your arms in the air.

If the cougar becomes aggressive:

Convince the cougar you are a threat, not prey.
Throw rocks at the cougar.
Speak loudly and firmly.
Brandish a big stick. (Or cattle prod, if you happen to have one handy!)
If the cougar attacks, fight back.

Many people have survived a cougar attack by fighting back with rocks, sticks, bare fists, fishing poles, back packs, and so on.

Now you have a plan for protecting yourself and your children if you should encounter a cougar. And you also know that the chances of encountering a cougar are very small. You run a much greater risk of being harmed by a bee, another human, or a car.

In the next few postings I will talk about cougar signs that you can watch out for, neat facts about cougars, and the special circumstance of encountering a cougar while on a vision quest or vision fast… (to be continued)

Cougars: what to do if you meet one on the road

There is a saying, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” This is concerned with our mind’s tendency to latch onto ideas and use them to fit our experience into preconceived shapes. Such as, for instance, the idea of how to become enlightened through emulating the life or practices of the Buddha. Since none of us is the Buddha, this won’t work. The only thing we can do is be with our direct experience in the moment, but even hearing…

[The writer was attacked by a cougar and is now in Burnaby General Hospital…]

Cougars: and now for the facts

As I mentioned earlier, when I first moved to Monkey Valley I did some research to find out about cougars, consulting my handy Mammals of British Columbia. But recently I came across a great pamphlet put out by the BC Ministry of Environment, Land and Parks and the BC Ministry of Forests, called Safety Guide to Cougars. This has information that finally put my fears to rest, once and for all. (That is, in combination with my own direct experience of the paucity of cougar encounters, detailed earlier in this thread.)

The pamphlet begins, “British Columbians are fortunate to share their province with cougars, one of the most mysterious and elusive of all creatures. The cougar’s secretive habits and astounding predatory abilities—a cougar is capable of killing a 600 lb moose—have resulted in a wealth of misconceptions and irrational fears.”

According to this government publication, in the past 100 years, only five people have been killed by cougars in BC. To put this in perspective, at least three people are killed by bees in Canada every year! The tiny bee is much more of a threat than the wild, magnificent cougar. Of those five who were killed, four deaths occurred on Vancouver Island.

There have also been 29 non-fatal cougar attacks in BC in the past 100 years, with 20 of them occurring on Vancouver Island. And the vast majority of cougar attacks were on children under 16 years of age.

While I might be suspicious of some things the government tells the populace, in this case I believe they would err on the side of caution. These facts are intended to reassure, and I find that they do. I am not running on Vancouver Island. I am not a child. The chances of having an encounter with a cougar are miniscule, and the chances of being attacked even lower. Given that I’ve already seen one from my car, that may be the only encounter I have with a cougar in my entire lifetime.

This has set my mind at ease. I hope hearing my story has soothed your fears as well, dear reader and potential visitor to Monkey Valley. In the next posting I will tell you some more facts about how to handle a cougar encounter if you ever have one… (to be continued)

Cougars and cattle prods

I’m not sure now where the idea of a cattle prod came from. It probably came to me when I was out on a run, dodging Douglas Lake cows and hoping the bull wouldn’t charge me. I looked at how big the cattle are, and thought they are actually much bigger than a cougar. So maybe if the cattle prod moves them around, it might have a deterring effect on a cougar as well.

I went to a farm supply store in Chilliwack, and learned there are different types of cattle prods—short ones and long ones! What kind should I get? This decision required some thought about being attacked, and from what angle would the attack likely come. I imagined a cougar leaping on me from where it was perched on a tree above. I imagined it attacking from the front and side. I imagined it leaping out of nowhere and biting my neck. In the end I decided I needed a short one and a long one. The long one I could use if I saw the cougar coming from the front or side. The short one, worn in a belt holster, I could use to zap the cougar if it was biting my neck from the rear.

Are you getting an impression of how ridiculous this is? Well, it took me a few more years to reach that point. I bought both sizes of cattle prod, and for about a year I ran with them both. The small one I wore in a belt holster, around my waist. And the long one I carried in my hand. I did this for at least a year, until I realized that no cougars have ever attacked me, and I’ve never even seen one while out on a run, and it seems unlikely that any cougar ever will attack me. And although I’d never seen any cougar since that one I saw from my car, I’d seen plenty of deer. And I know that the deer are the cougar’s favourite food.

So I finally reached the conclusion that given the cougar has plenty of deer to eat, and given that I am in the middle of a large area of relative wilderness (not encroaching on cougar territory like the houses in North Vancouver), it is very unlikely that the cougar would want me for dinner. So I stopped carrying the cattle prod, and enjoyed the freedom of running without weapons! As you can see, it took a number of years for my direct experience to outweigh the strength of my fearful fantasies… (to be continued)

Cougars: pistol-packing mama!

Prior to moving to Monkey Valley I had little exposure to guns. My dad taught me and my sister Kim to shoot a rifle one summer at the family cabin on Knouff Lake. It was fun, shooting at cans on a log. Learning to watch for the kick. But since then I’d never used a gun, and probably never even seen one.

I believed people when they said I needed a gun at Monkey Valley. Being there all alone, and especially when out running by myself, it seemed I needed a gun for protection. So my mom lent me a rifle, and I enrolled in a course to learn how to handle guns safely. This course also was a prerequisite for obtaining a PAL license, which is required by anyone who owns, buys, or possesses a gun. I got the license, and I practiced shooting the rifle at a target that I nailed to a tree by the woodpile at Monkey Valley. This was kind of fun. I practiced cleaning and oiling it. I kept it hidden in my bedroom closet, easily accessible if anyone broke into the house during the night. I went over in my mind the steps involved in getting and loading the gun in the dark. It seemed that having the gun there made me more afraid of intruders, not less!

I went to a gun store on Renfrew Street in Vancouver to look at guns and get prices. I went to the outdoor sporting goods store in Merritt (the Powderkeg, now out of business due to Walmart and Canadian Tire big box stores being invited to take over from the local businesses), to see if prices were cheaper. I found out about the local shooting club in Merritt. My final piece of research was to go shooting at a range out in Chilliwack with my course instructor. This was a chance to try different types of guns and see how they felt. I had been leaning towards a pistol of some kind, which I would be able to wear in a holster while running. I found that running with the rifle was a little cumbersome!

I was excited about going to a real range to practice. In the class we never shot a loaded gun. I’d driven past the Pacific Shooter’s range many times on my way to go trail running by the Seymour River. My instructor lived in Langley though, so I drove out there and we drove to the range in Chilliwack. The day we went to the shooting range was overcast and chilly—a dreary winter day. No one else was at the range. My instructor showed me the protocols, like where to put our stuff, how to put up the targets, and what flag to raise to indicate the range was active. Then he showed me how to turn and shoot. He reinforced some of the principles I’d learned in class, about holding the gun and positioning my body. I tried shooting with his pistol. It was very black (energetically black, though actually a steely colour of metal), very heavy, very loud. And very powerful. I could see how using a gun makes someone feel powerful.

And I knew after trying it a few times that I could never shoot this gun at a cougar or any other wild animal. I felt that I would prefer to be killed than to inflict this shocking violence on a living creature. So that was the end of the gun episode. I returned the rifle to my mom. I resumed running with a hatchet. And I still kept imagining the cougar attacking me while I was running… (to be continued)