Goldilocks was Not a Victim
Hi, I’m Sasha, and I write nomadic stories from my RV that you can read in 3 minutes or less. If you’d like, those stories can slip into your inbox every Monday.
You can check out a recent piece on Holiday Magic on the road here.
Next to a busy street, the land covered in wet branches, a perfume of the forest wafted over three soggy black bears with scents of rotting leaves and moist soil. The mother and her two cubs foraged for bitter berries in a rocky enclave. In June of 2019, I watched as they lumbered up the ridge, cars slowing to view them. We flashed our headlights to oncoming traffic to alert them of the three little bears.
The scenic road was bumper-to-bumper with onlookers searching for snippets of nature that could bring them somehow closer to mother earth, our gas engines puffing along the blackened tar road.
An angry driver sped past the stopped traffic. Oblivious, he angrily leaned into his horn as he thundered past the bears.
In a national park.
As we drove slowly through the Great Smoky Mountains, a child of 10 or 12 years old got out of an aged minivan to chase wild turkeys across a prairie. His mother figure watched from the driver’s window. People rumbling in the truck ahead of us tossed litter out of the windows: peanut shells and the hulls of sunflower seeds.
“Why are they doing this?” I asked Jeremiah, my travel companion.
“They just don’t care,” he said from behind the wheel.
I felt a bit like vomiting.
I’ve tried to write this before. Maybe I just needed more space from the moments, singling out the memory of three bears climbing through the woods as separate from the surrounding memories. But it is stark in contrast to the man who honked and sped by all of us as we watched. I want to talk about the vast lands where deer and turkeys and fieldmice can make their home, but the memory is so littered with physical trash that I haven’t wanted to think about it.
Goldilocks barged into a bear’s home, swung open the door when nobody answered.
“This place is as good as mine,” she said to herself, her hands on her hips, “after all, nobody came when I knocked.”
Then she ate their food, for certainly it was cooked for her. Broke a chair and became angry it was not comfortable for her human body. Slept in the beds of these bears. And when the natural owners of the home came back, she yelled “help,” and ran away.
She is no more the victim than we are. Nature is. And us? We’re the perpetrators.
During the pandemic, many of us are seeking comfort in hiking outside or forest bathing, a way to feel like we’re still connected with the “outside world” without giving hugs and toasting glasses of champagne during the holidays. But now, more than ever, I’m very aware of the effects of individual human decisions.
It doesn’t mean we can’t interact with nature, or take solace in it. It just means it’s time to take responsibility for our actions.
I don’t usually offer a takeaway in my newsletters, opting for just tiny snippets of my life as I travel, but I’d advise you of this: think about how you can make a better choice for those who haven’t seen the Smoky Mountains. Leave this world a better place for three bears who are munching their way through fragrant leaves and brambles. Our choices matter.
Thank you for traveling with me,
Sasha
Down the rabbit hole:
There are as many as 16 discover planets that are considered to have Goldilocks Zones that could support life. Goldilocks Worlds refer to a planet that is neither too hot nor too cold, and whose atmospheres are “just right.” Learn more here.
Japan was the first to coin the term forest bathing, which means to simply spend time surrounded by nature and take it in with our senses.