Through the Lens of Play

STUART L. BROWN

In attempting to make sense of the
universe and our places in it, most
of us respond with awe and won-
der at its immensities, richness,
and secrets. We garner informa-
tion about the cosmos from our own
direct observations and experiences, our
cultural myths, our private intuitions,
and inner narratives. These "inner
truths" can be blended into a conscious
flow of multifaceted, privately manufac-
tured stories. Further supplementation
occurs through meditative insights,
altered states of consciousness, dreams,
shamanic visions, and epiphanies from
many sources. Rarely has play been
considered a basic ingredient in this
process of our search for meaning.
Whether we lean in our private cosmol-
ogy as Fred Hoyle ( Horgan 1995) does,
toward a designed, steady-state universe
of infinite proportions, of which we
are a conscious part; a celebratory,
big-bang-spawned, reflective-poetic
Swimme-Berry ( 1992) universe; or a
meaningless, infinite, multiple big-
bang, Steve Weinberg view (The Soul of
the Universe1994), play has not been in
the running with gravity, space-time
phenomena, or primal consciousness as
a necessary ingredient in the cosmolog-
ical mix.

© 1995 Stuart L. Brown

It is 1992, and I am in a tree stand
thirty feet up in an old-growth cypress
on the east side of Alaska's Admiralty
Island with ethologist and animal play
expert Bob Fagen. He nudges me and I
look across the tidal flats toward the
outlet of Pack Creek as it flows into the
inside passage of Seymour Canal. We
are about an hour's light-plane flight
southwest of Juneau in a pristine wilder-
ness. The feeding bears we have been
watching for the last two weeks are
round-bellied and high-spirited. The
salmon are at the peak of their run, and
the creek outlet is gold and silver tinged
with the pulsating bodies of chum and
pinks thrashing upstream. Two juvenile
brown (grizzly) bears in the distance are
approaching each other across the
meadow that abuts the tidal flats. Ears
slightly back, eyes widened, mouths
open, they begin a playful wrestling
match that extends for many minutes
across our entire field of vision. In and
out of the rapids, watched by sentinel-
like bald eagles, haw-hawed at by
ravens, ignored by their fishing fellow
tribe members, splashing through clear
sparkling pools, they circle, pirouette,
gambol, stand, lean shoulder-to-shoul-
der, and playfully embrace in their up-
right dance. Periodically they pause,
look at the water and then, as if under
the influence of a master conductor,
begin mouth-to-mouth, head-to-head,
body-to-body, paw-to-paw, their agile,
fast, compelling display of bear play. It
is as if they have just inhaled some cos-
mic mist filled with joy and are intoxi-
cated by it.

For the past nine years, Bob and his
wife Johanna have organized a major,
ongoing ethological study of brown
bears in the wild with a primary focus
on play. The National Geographic Soci-
ety had sent me on assignment to
observe them and their work. I felt for-
tunate to be learning about bear play
and the phenomenon of animal play
from them, and they had acquainted me
with about twenty-eight of the individ-
ual bears that frequent Pack Creek.
Bob's meticulous observations have
earned him worldwide stature among
the scientific and ethological communi-
ties. His book, Animal Play Behavior
( Fagen 1981), a monumental treatise, is
the gold standard for describing animal
play. It reviews the story of animal play
in detail from aardvark to the song spar-
row Zonothricia melodia. Aware of his
encyclopedic knowledge of all animal
play, but filled with the spirit of unfet-
tered joy of the bears' play we have just
observed, I ask, "Bob, why do these
bears play?"

After some hesitation, without look-
ing up, he says, "Because it's fun."

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