From my window at the Hotel Aragon, Perpignan

While I worked on a proposal in February 2010, each day through my sun-filled hotel room I could view the mountain range Pyrénées-Orientales, with its peak Le Canigou.  This chain of mountains is older than the Alps. All kinds of human drama has played itself out at their feet or perched on their flanks.

In Perpignan there was a festival of the bear. A feigned abduction of a human female by a (dressed-up-man-) bear was followed by the brave conquer of the predator bear by various local men.

With brown bears hunted or marginalized to disappearance in the region, festival organizers now import a bear skin from Canada for the dress-up.  As a fitting irony for our times, a few brown bears have themselves been abducted from Slovenia.  They have been re-introduced into the Pyrenees, with mixed results, provoking different viewpoints.