Bear Your Soul Celebrates Ten Years

“Because of the way that myth takes it for granted that miracles are always happening, the waking life of a mythically inspired people—the ancient Greeks, for instance—more closely resembles a dream than it does the waking world of a scientifically disenchanted thinker.”

–Friedrich Nietzsche

Bear Your Soul is an annual event at Easton Mountain [https://www.eastonmountain.org], a community, retreat center, and sanctuary in the countryside outside Saratoga Springs, New York. Once a year gay man of all shapes, sizes, colors, and abilities come together at Bear your Soul to find personal, social, erotic, and spiritual connection and build a loving, joyous, sex-positive, intimate, spiritual community. A word I heard repeatedly at the recent tenth anniversary of Bear Your Soul is “juicy.” This is a word used in the Billy Community [https://www.thebillys.org], a heart-centered gay men’s community in northern California. 

“Juicy” is a word Billys use to describe the magic created when we come together in Billyspace during these gatherings of the tribe. The same magic manifests at Bear Your Soul gatherings. I have been a long-time member of both communities. “Juiciness” arises from the deepening of our rich and complex interconnectedness. It comes out in the joy and love we have for each other and which comes to the surface of our awareness, often manifested in spontaneous tears of joy and a radical opening of our hearts. It is the conscious embrace of our oneness and the sacredness of our lives as flawed human beings.

Easton Mountain founders Freddy and Jay Freeman created this unique and safe sacred (dare I say, “mythic”?) space where bears can find connection and understanding in a heart-centered, sex-positive, welcoming community. Bear Your Soul specifically fosters acceptance of all gay men, regardless of shape, color, or body size. It is a safe place for those still struggling with body image and identity. It promotes deeper connections on all levels—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. For many, including myself, the Bear Your Soul gathering has afforded life-changing experiences. 

The tenth anniversary gathering [https://www.eastonmountain.org/onsite/bys10th] offered workshops on connecting with our bodies, erotic massage, a talent show, an ecstatic dance, a naming ritual (I claimed my Billy name “Dragonfly” here as my bear name),

a discussion of our queer icons, a 90-minute interview and Q&A session with me (as founder of the Bear History Project, inspiration for the founding of Bear Your Soul, and author of the memoir Resilience), and an awards banquet. Each day began with a small group meeting, which allowed us to share our experiences, our goals, our concerns, and our questions. (The small group serves a function similar to the Billy heart circle.)

Featured at the deck party was the Bearapalooza Reunion Jam. In 2002 Freddy Freeman brought together bear-identified musicians and performers for the first time for what became the first and best-known group of bear music. The late Martin Foster Swinger, considered the founder of bear music, was honored for his contributions. He always regaled his audiences with his performance of the children’s song “Uncle Walter Goes Dancing with Bears.” Bearapalooza veterans Don Harvey, Max Christopher (my bunkmate), Reverend Yolanda [https://yolanda.net], and Jay and Freddy Freeman played at jam session. The gathering was capped off with Reverend Yolanda’s Old Time Gospel Brunch.

After years of being lost in the wilderness, living an economically precarious life in unbearable social isolation, I had lost connection with all of my communities. As I spiraled ever downward in the quicksand of compound PTSD, I found that everything I touched turned to shit. Things shifted during the pandemic shutdown. Zoom allowed me to reconnect with the Billys.

Through a comedy of errors, of misunderstandings and missed communications with Freddy over arranging me to go to a previous Bear Your Soul gathering, I took a long time off to stop the spiraling. The tenth anniversary gathering paved the way for me to reconnect with Freddy and the whole crew at Easton Mountain. 

The gathering was a major turning point in my life, both personal and professional. I was frequently moved to tears of joy finding myself once again in a loving spiritual gay men’s community. I could tell Freddy I love him. I expressed my love for all my bear brothers through deed and word. I sorely missed my friend Martin Swinger. He had been my bunkmate at my first Bear Your Soul gathering in 2014. His Bearapalooza brother Max Christopher was my bunkmate this year. (Sadly for me, I found myself smitten by Max, unable to do or say anything, knowing he is happily partnered and being bunkmates would lead to awkwardness between us.) It was reassuring to know I am ready for romance again. I had amazing conversations with so many kindred spirits. 

Sociologist and historian Max Weber described the modern world of rationalization and intellectualization as a world of disenchantment. The ultimate and most sublime values have retreated either “into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations.” We gay men as social outsiders (even as we are becoming more and more tolerated by mainstream society) have a special and urgent need to create our own world as a “great enchanted garden,” a heart-centered and spiritually grounded community. The bear and Billy communities are both “juicy” communities where I participate in the miracles of our common humanity. As the Billys close each heart circle, “the circle is open and unbroken.”