The Great Escape

Theme song from the Great Escape, prisoners whistling. Recaptured Steve McQueen enters Stalag Luft 3 and the commandant simply orders; "Kooler".

It was a commendable escape by any measure: Patiently wait until the staff calls it a day; dig a tunnel under a fence; then, make a dash for love.

But after 19 days on the lam, Boo, a four-and-a-half-year-old grizzly bear that made a bid for freedom after catching the whiff of a sow, is back behind his electric fence at a refuge in British Columbia.It's just the simple bear necessities of Boo's love life

Or perhaps like the journalist who wrote this I am simply anthropomorphizing the bear story. Nah, bears are people too.

THE GREAT BEAR MOTHER

A major cult of the Bear Mother has been traced from the earliest times throughout the colder northern hemisphere, from Finland to Siberia to North America. Ritually arranged skulls of herbivorous cave bears have been discovered in caves in France and in the German Alps, which date from the time of Neanderthal humans, at least 75,000 years ago. The Great She Bear, whose animal fur, skins and body gave warmth and food to the northern peoples was revered as an awesome Ancestor Mother of human beings. The Ainu of Japan, who are descendants of early Siberian migrations, still retain their veneration of the Bear in both legend and ritual. For Native Americans the Bear is one of the guardians of the Four Directions. (Primitive Mythology by Joseph Campbell, Penguin)

The Great She Bear also reigned in the heavens. She was named in the constellation of Ursa Major which cycled then as now, around the night-time skies of the northern hemisphere each year. In Altaic, Siberian and Tibetan mythology there was said to be a direct connection between Ursa Major and the Earth via a Universal Tree, which was rooted in the earth at Shambhala. Shambhala itself is a mythical realm which lies somewhere to the north of Tibet. It is believed to be a source of the 'Ancient Wisdom'. (See 'Dawn Behind the Dawn' by Geoffrey Ashe, Henry Holt, 1992).

Also See:

Bears

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