After a painfully and pathetically exhaustive search, and after reading an accident report, two accounts from eye-witnesses on the scene the day after the attack and a handful of statements from authors or snippets from various (then-) upcoming books, I've made up my mind (or changed it):
- I fear Tim Treadwell was, indeed, a suicidally loony nutjob. After chasing one addiction after another, he took a bear-hoarding addiction as his last.
- I fear that he placed his too-trusting, starry-eyed girlfriend into a position of terrible danger; not willingly and despite known risks, but as he lied to himself as to the danger of his latest habit he also was unable to respond adequately to his girlfriend's very healthy unease around these powerful and indiscriminate animals.
- I'm not ultimately surprised that he was mauled by a bear, even if I am disappointed it was fatal (x2). I'm only surprised he wasn't seriously injured on the 12 years of bear-stalking that preceded his 13th summer.
“What haunts me is that in all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature. To me, there is no such thing as a secret world of the bears, and this blank stare speaks only of a half-bored interest in food. But for Timothy Treadwell, this bear was a friend, a saviour.”That, I think, is the best quote of them all. I understand when kids do something completely bone-headed; but the hope is that we adult-types all understand our place in the grand machine that is the harsh and unswerving universe -- that we have the sense to come in out of the rain. The proliferation of Santa cults suggest otherwise, though, and that we're all wonderfully special snowflakes individually protected by our chosen Santa.
Despite the fact that no one's ever poached the bears Mr Treadwell claimed to be protecting from poachers, I'm still curious as to how many Greenpeacers we can get up to that campsite on a Poaching rumour. The subset of them who will go are the very ones I'd prefer to be there. It's a good start.Well, crap. You got all the way down to the end of this stupid post and didn't find a coherent or relevant thought in the whole thing. Suckerrr !












