Irrational dread of starting junior high school filled me during sixth grade, and expanded through the summer of 1967. Now I know that this was my first episode of depression and panic disorder, possibly aggravated by or masquerading as an enervating illness that resembled mononucleosis. As the start of classes loomed, I bundled my fear into obsessive reading of magazine stories about fatal grizzly bear attacks. I'm sure there's a psychological term for this coping mechanism.
In my black and white memory of this time, I am reading the magazine stories while lying on the gray living room carpet--reading the stories over and over again. The carpet is new, just installed the summer before. In my recollection, Sports Illustrated ran a continuing story for four issues, although I can only find a citation for "Menace in Our Northern Parks; Grizzlies," by E. Watson, SI 27:62-4+, October 30, 1967, in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. The Time Magazine online archive provided some corroboration of my memories, and I was able to print out the ghastly report, "Night of Terror; Two Killed By Grizzlies in Montana Parks," Time 90:19, August 28, 1967.
Werner Herzog's new documentary film about the grizzly-obsessed Timothy Treadwell is in theaters now. I'm both repulsed and attracted by the subject. I'm thankful, too, that I don't have to start junior high ever again, speaking of horrifying.
Herzog made a film, Aguirre, the Wrath of God in 1972 . I saw the film in college at the UN-L Foreign Film Series in 1975, give or take a year, and I have been haunted by it for thirty years.
Amazon.com reviewer, Bret Fetzer, writes that Aguirre, "becomes more pertinent every year. The astonishing Klaus Kinski plays Don Lope de Aguirre, a brutal conquistador who leads his soldiers into the Amazon jungle in an obsessive quest for gold. The story is of the expedition's relentless degeneration into brutality and despair, but the movie is much more than its plot. Director Werner Herzog strove, whenever possible, to replicate the historical circumstances of the conquistadors, and the sheer human effort of traveling through the dense mountains and valleys of Brazil in armor creates a palpable sense of struggle and derangement. This sense of reality, combined with Kinski's intensely furious performance, makes Aguirre, the Wrath of God a riveting film. "
Watching the Grizzly Man movie trailer, I mentally substitute Klaus Kinski for Treadwell. Do I want to be haunted by another Herzog movie for thirty years?
Living in Texas in the summer often leads sane persons, trying to steer their cars along congested expressways without actually touching their fingertips to the red hot steering wheel, to wonder what-in-the-hey-ho those armor-clad Spanish conquistadors were thinking when they decided this region was fit for human habitation. Had they completely fried their brains inside those helmets in their obsessive pursuit of gold, the fountain of youth, and opportunities to abuse the indigenous population? Fried brains may account for the Spanish conquistadors speaking German!
