Hanging Out with Wild Things 

“Our unacknowledged and, in fact, usually unperceived loneliness comes from being trapped inside our own flawed paradigms. Our culture sees animals and plants as resources to be consumed or problems to be solved, not as other beings who live in a world of relationships, just as we do. When those relationships include us, they are more nuanced than simply viewing us as potential predators or sources of food. Sometimes, our fellow beings are curious about us. Sometimes, they even like us. Even if we don’t. Which is goofy, tree-hugger thinking, right? Only it isn’t: the only reason we react that way is because we prefer to stay safe, and superior, within our own unchallenged cultural worldview. Ironic, considering that so many of us are willing to recognize affection, curiosity, and empathy in dogs and cats. If tame animals can befriend us, or enjoy hanging out with us, why not wild animals? They’re essentially the same nature, after all. We’re the ones who invent and enforce the boundaries.”—Kevin Van Tighem

While I Draw Breath

By Dr. Kevin Van Tighem

HIGH RIVER, ALBERTA Canada—(Hubris)—March/April 2026―I stopped at Castle Junction one day to break up a long drive, ate my lunch sandwich, and went for a short walk into the woods. The pine trees stood still; there was no wind. Patches of old snow caked the mosses and grasses beneath the trees. I could hear the busy hum of the Trans-Canada Highway across the river, but all was still in the forest. I assumed I was alone.

Something flickered between two trees. I stopped to watch. A sharp little face, and then a marten came bounding out into the open. It stared at me, then resumed its random hops, hunting for voles amid the downed logs and frozen vegetation. Its hunt took it in a half-circle around me, barely a couple of paces away, before it veered off into the woods. Bemused, grateful, I continued my aimless stroll only to see the marten come bounding back, cut in front of me, and then course along beside and ahead of me like a little hunting dog.

We walked together for several minutes. When we parted, it was because I turned back and not because the marten had grown tired of my company. I looked back briefly, and the little guy was still busy with its hunt. It appeared that I was the only one harboring any regret about our parting, but it seemed no less certain that we had both enjoyed the time together. I know why I did, but I can’t figure out the marten’s thinking.

But aren’t humans bad news, usually, for other creatures? Not, evidently, for this one. It clearly had chosen to hang out with me. I felt privileged and grateful but puzzled.

A couple of years later at our property on the Oldman River, my wife Gail came in from a morning’s weed-pulling and told me she had a new friend. She had been leaned over working on a buckbrush patch when she sensed something watching her and looked up to see a young doe mule deer a few yards away. It looked more curious than concerned. She said a quiet Hi and went back to work. When she looked up again, the deer had bedded down a few meters away. They spent the rest of the morning together, until Gail came in for lunch.

That proved not to be an isolated event. The little doe came looking for her several more times that summer and, when she ran into it accidentally from time to time along the trail, would simply stand and watch her go by. In the fall, when I got drawn for an antlerless mule deer hunting tag, Gail gave me a direct order: leave her friend alone. Sure enough, I ran into the doe a couple of times. The little doe never trusted me as much as she did Gail, but even so she also never fled from me. Each time I met her that fall I said Hi and carried on; it was another, older deer that eventually ended up in our freezer.

The deer wasn’t Gail’s first wild friend. A red squirrel used to join her for lunch on the porch of our home in Prince Albert National Park. Gail would eat her sandwich while the squirrel ate spruce seeds from the cones it brought to the picnic. She never fed it. It could have dined anywhere, but it chose to sit beside my wife. She grieved its loss when it fell victim to a passing car.

Our unacknowledged and, in fact, usually unperceived loneliness comes from being trapped inside our own flawed paradigms. Our culture sees animals and plants as resources to be consumed or problems to be solved, not as other beings who live in a world of relationships, just as we do. When those relationships include us, they are more nuanced than simply viewing us as potential predators or sources of food. Sometimes, our fellow beings are curious about us. Sometimes, they even like us. Even if we don’t.

Which is goofy, tree-hugger thinking, right? Only it isn’t: the only reason we react that way is because we prefer to stay safe, and superior, within our own unchallenged cultural worldview. Ironic, considering that so many of us are willing to recognize affection, curiosity, and empathy in dogs and cats. If tame animals can befriend us, or enjoy hanging out with us, why not wild animals? They’re essentially the same nature, after all. We’re the ones who invent and enforce the boundaries.

Shy children in day care centers often avoid direct eye contact but sidle over to other kids and quietly play beside them. Parallel play is a child’s way of enjoying the proximity of a stranger while building a comfort zone inside which a relationship can grow. There’s something similar happening in the conversations we have while driving: no eye contact, easy proximity, a space shared. If you want to communicate with a teen child, face-to-face can be an unproductive choice. A long drive is often a good one.

So, there is a kind of relationship-building that involves proximity without demanding close attention. Just hanging out and letting things come together. The reason we see it so seldom with wild animals, I suspect, is because we don’t expect it and rarely give it a chance. Too often, an encounter with a wild animal involves approaching it directly with a camera, retreating from it in fear, or excitedly pointing it out to another human. Simply being present while demanding nothing in the company of another doesn’t seem to come easily to us two-leggeds.

The quality of our relationships matter. That’s a given. But the diversity of our relationships matter, too. They shape our being. They form our bonds. And they can keep us safe too.

A late June day in Waterton Lakes National Park: blue sky, green aspens, flowers, and bird song. I was heading out of the park for an appointment and had just passed a set of small wetland beaver ponds when I it occurred to me that fishing season would be opening in a couple of days. If there were any trout in those ponds, they’d be worth returning to.

I turned around and parked just off the shoulder of the road. It would only take a few minutes to walk along the edge of the biggest pond and see if I could spot any fish. I had left early, so there was time to spare.

The sedges and swamp grasses were still covered with dew except where some large animals had recently wandered across the opening. Swallows dipped and darted over the pond. The air smelled of greenery and marsh flowers. I picked my way along the water edge, peering into the depths, and soon confirmed that there were no trout here. I’d have to fish somewhere else.

Rather than retrace my steps to the car I decided to cut through an aspen grove.

Along the edge of the stand, young aspen sprouts reached to my knees, and then to my shoulders. As I pushed my way deeper in, the bright sunshine vanished and a canopy of older trees rose to enclose me in a shadowy, verdant world of white tree stems and lush understory. And the smell of wet fur.

I stopped abruptly. Something moved in the vegetation a few paces away and then emerged into a patch of sunlight. It was a small grizzly bear cub. A moment later its gangly little sibling appeared beside it. My heart nearly stopped. Where was the mother? I’d left my canister of bear spray on the passenger seat of the car. The trees were too short and smooth to climb.

The cubs seemed unaware of me, even though they were barely five meters away. More movement, beyond them, and there was mom. She was eating cow parsnip tops. Turning, she raised her head and I saw her ears come forward as she spotted me. A green stem hung from her mouth. Our eyes met.

I thought of my wife and three young children at home, oblivious to what was about to happen here. I thought of my mother who had already experienced the trauma and tragedy of having a child mauled by a bear. My moment of helpless despair was colored by anger at myself for having been so thoughtless.

The bear stared at me for a few seconds, then lowered her head, ripped out another plant, and turned her back on me. Heart pounding, gripped by a strange sense of unreality, as if this were a strange dream, I eased quietly backward and then turned and walked out of the woods back into the sunlight. From out there, looking back, it was just a grove of trees, leaves flickering in the breeze. A red-winged blackbird was singing. And I was still alive.

I’ve never stopped reflecting on that encounter. In a moment of calm mercy, that mother bear granted me a gift of acceptance. It could have gone very differently, and that’s certainly what I expected, but there was another story trying to happen than the ones we so often tell ourselves about bears. That mother bear had spent a lot of time feeding with her youngsters along the main access road into the national park. Many people had stopped to watch them. They watched; she fed—a zone of comfort developed. And when I finally blundered into that zone, she already knew me as a part of her world and let me leave in peace.

We had been companions, briefly; not adversaries. It was a gift of acceptance. And it changed the world, at least for me, in a deep and lasting manner. Just as the marten had, in its own way, and just like Gail’s friends. Just like so many other beings who have welcomed me briefly into their world — our shared world—over the years.

We are not alone out there, unless we choose to be.

Editor’s Note: This New Year’s Day essay was first posted on Van Tighem’s Substack, where you may read him more regularly in the year ahead.