I can’t imagine.
I hear this all the time when I tell people the story of Elias’s premature birth and subsequent disabilities. I know my friend Dan Bigley has heard it too.
Blinded by a bear at 25.
I can’t imagine.
There are really only two choices when your life cracks open and exposes a frightening underside you never dreamed possible. To accept or not to accept. To live in denial and regret, or to form a new life from the ashes of your old one.
And from the experience of falling.
To sprout wings stitched from the fabric of almost losing everything but not. And to find joy in the uncertainty of our existence in this impermanent world.
Dan’s new book, co-written by Debra McKinney, is aptly titled: Beyond the Bear: How I Learned to Live and Love Again after Being Blinded by a Bear.
It is first and foremost a love story, and knowing Dan and Amber as I do, from parties and potlucks, their romance and devotion to each other is most certainly non-fiction. And yet their story is almost unbelievable. After a year-long crush, and some casual dates, the two finally spend a night together:
I looked at Amber and she looked at me and for a moment we both forgot to breathe. I reached for her hand, and led her back into the house and down the hall to my bedroom, closing the door behind us.
My room had little to offer in terms of sitting options so we sat cross-legged on my bed facing each other, the sound of the creek pouring in through my open window. I took Amber’s hand and placed her palm against my heart, then put my own against hers. We sat without talking, without needing to.
"I feel like I’ve known you my whole life," I told her.
After a night spent snuggling and sharing, Dan leaves in the morning for a fishing trip. He gives Amber a hug and kiss goodbye, with no way of knowing this would be the last time his eyes fall upon her fair freckled face.
Or that the last thing he would ever see is the yellow eyes of the grizzly bear that attacked him.
Beyond the Bear is more than a bear mauling story, but a story of survival and redemption. It is a story of what can go wrong in the wilderness and how that same wildness can heal a battered soul. How the image of a tree outside Dan’s hospital room, where he lay with his face bandaged and reconstructed, could bring him such solace at a time when he can’t yet imagine a future with abundant light. Or how the call of a chickadee could instill his first sense of capability:
A black-capped chickadee is one of the easiest birds to identify but the ability to do so held huge significance to me. It was the first thing I accomplished on my own as a blind person. It was something I could do; I could identify a chickadee. I could still enjoy this little fluff of a bird that weighs barely half an ounce, with its black stocking cap and matching bib beneath its beak. I could still admire its ability to tolerate Alaska’s winters better than most people. Sitting in the sun, I could hear not only its song, but the flutter of its tiny wings as it flitted from branch to branch above my head...Sharing its company was my first step back to the natural world.
An avid skier, mountain climber, and fisherman, before the bear, Dan had also worked as an activity therapist bringing troubled kids into the wilderness. He always believed in the healing power of nature, and in the end, it is this kinship with the universe that helps heal him. From the gardens of his childhood retreat in California, to the friendships forged at Prescott College during numerous backpacking trips, to the waters of the Russian River in Alaska, the site of the bear mauling itself.
Dan Bigley nearly died along the banks of the Russian River, when he had the misfortune of walking between an agitated sow and her cubs. And he owes his life, in part, to the people who responded. Beyond the Bear is also a medical story, where doctors are both human and heroes, bringing their uncertainty with them into the surgery room and yet doing the impossible with only the magic of their minds and hands. Working tirelessly, immaculately, only to feel the enormity of it all, hours later, when they leave their gloves behind:
Thoroughly spent, [Dr. Kallman] stumbled back to his office late that afternoon, unshaven and in the same jeans and sweatshirt he’d thrown on around 4:30 that morning...That’s when it hit him, what such devastating injuries would mean to a twenty-five-year-old man in the prime of his life. He knew nothing about me other than my name, but he did know that if I beat the odds and survived, I would wake up from my coma blind, disfigured, and possibly brain damaged.
Kallman was too fried to fight it. A lump rose in his throat and tears welled up in his eyes.
But Dr. Kallman couldn’t possibly know that Dan Bigley, bolstered by the love of family and friends, as well as his innate will to not just survive but live a fully-imagined life, would take this experience and, like an alchemist, turn it into gold.
I won’t tell you all what happens, because I want you to read his story for yourself. But I'll leave you with one of Dan's lines from the end of his book:
Being angry at the world or wallowing about in the quicksand of why me had the potential to ruin my life far more than being blinded by a bear.
Dan Bigley chose not to dwell in the darkness for long; and his book, Beyond the Bear, beautifully describes his healing process, both physically and spiritually. The suspense of the story will not only draw you in, but once started, all you’ll want to do is read. Forget work. Forget parenthood. Forget food and sex and sleep.
Just read.
It's that good.
And I’m not just saying this because I know him. (I’m far too honest for that.)
But because I do know him, Dan has graciously offered to give away a free book in a drawing of my friends and readers who share this blog post and/or like Beyond the Bear on Facebook.
Trust me, you’ll love Dan’s heart, as well as Amber’s, the ultimate pulse behind his amazing story.
And you will imagine...
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Thanks all!
