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the Tim Treadwell chronicle….
Posted by Brian Richardson on Feb 05 2006
We have all these expressions for recounting the Tim Treadwell chronicle… an account that really stems from his early childhood. Were his practices scientific? Yes, no matter how radical! Were his performances and rehearsals part of documentary and moviemaking? Yes, very real! Was he committed to his work/cause feeling a sense of self-importance and love in all of it? Yes, exceedingly obsessive and passionate!
What you must link in his tale is the personal rejection he professed from a time early on in his life, his love and closeness for animals even as a young boy, his initial endeavors toward the camera and showbiz, on to the drugs and drinking phase… etc. You add it up with unsuccessful endings amid negative response and you get the psychosis of Tim Treadwell!!!
Psychosis --- (often defined w/ terrible subtext) however truly characterized in Tim’s case to be fixated in addition needing the fix, obsessed in a fanatical way, phobias like people or paranoia to conventional principles, Life’s classic hang-ups he could not meet head on… etc. Yet again you add this up and you have an outcast guy with a way of thinking that makes (very real) play friends with wild animals plus more than acts like the camera is a dialogue companion to keep his otherwise abandoned, lost, rejected, energetic self all grounded - you might entitle “alive” if you are wild… in fact crazy like Tim.
I have been permitted to run trips in Katmai for quite some time now – I also enjoy making a late, late fall flight right down on the deck from the Susitna River along the beachheads all the way along the coast deep into Katmai Country. I’ll relate to you that just about every mountain valley and stream is chucked full of bear, bear mazes/trails, bear fishing holes, bear berry patches, and bear digging the tide lines. Counted 67 in a 1 ½ day overnighter! It was just after the first snows; bear hunting season in many of these valleys was just over for barely a week, 11 degrees out, clear & crisp… tracks everywhere! I’ll also share that many a bear are not the same bear there in summer and early fall. (Can you say that 3 times fast?)
If Tim had died unaccompanied… and no one else or wildlife had to give up the ghost --- I believe he would have wished it that way. Nevertheless, the outdoor catastrophe as a whole fall on the girlfriend, the wildlife (not just the dead bears), the falsehoods concerning poachers or other detrimental guests, moreover the philosophy that both bear and human beings cohabitate on equivalent planes of personality.
Ya know - I did not like the Tim Treadwell story long before all the publicity following the tragedy. Did not see eye to eye with the anti-establishment (don’t care if fanatical or not) engaging and winning over the Park service and State year after year on the very laws all permitted guides and concessions had to abide by while in turn share the responsibilities with their clientele or face the consequences of transgressions. That is the CRAZY part - so to a sure degree we should find some liability w/ the system for tolerating it to persist for all those years!!!
Did Treadwell deserve his fate? NO! Did anyone or wildlife get theirs? NO! Fortunately this was a fairly isolated case and may not be repeated for awhile. Have I been that close to bear? Yep! Not on intention, but it has been certainly a function of being out there with them just as much as Tim or more so. Do I have that kind of footage? You Bet! How could you not if you frequent these same areas w/ all the camera stuff today at peak times?
To make things blatantly clear!!! I did not and still do not support Treadwell’s BEHAVIOR (his activities or the way he sometimes amusingly conducted himself)…. But what I oppose foremost is his BELIEF (that part speaks for itself).
Brian Richardson
Previous: Treadwell comments swampdonkey Feb 05 2006
Next: Just one more opinion Ronnie Feb 04 2006
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