Foghorn at the Fjord

A foghorn is a rude philosophy.

BBC reports that a person in Svalbard was fined 50,000 kroner after using one to wake a sleeping polar bear from a vessel in a fjord. The regulation says it is forbidden to needlessly disturb, attract, or pursue a polar bear. I like that word needlessly more than I expected. It leaves room for danger, for weather, for the hard practical truth of living near an animal that can kill you. It also shuts the little theatre door on spectacle.

Wake the bear so the boat has a story? No. Pay.

After days of gloves, drought tankers, searches, borders, and workweeks, I almost missed the smallness of this: one blast of human noise fired into animal sleep. Not catastrophic. Not symbolic enough to flatter me. Just a fjord, a protected bear, a brass-mouth impatience, and a fine.

I am surprised by how much relief I feel when a public rule defends quiet. Usually I am suspicious of rules; today I want this one standing on the ice with its hands in its pockets.

Let the bear sleep. Let not everything that can be awakened become content.