Treadwell Mistake In Grizzly Man

What the film Grizzly Man teaches us about the wildness of nature and how human beings ought to relate to it is that nature is both beautiful and dangerous and to make the choice to get too close to that beauty can come with fatal consequences that one must accept beforehand.
The mistake that led to Treadwell’s death was him deciding to camp at the grizzly maze in a place where he was hidden from the bears rather than a place out in the open where the bears would be more aware of his presence (Nelson & Herzog, 2005). Also, another mistake was camping in the grizzly maze during the time of year when the bears he was familiar with had gone into their dens for hibernation and different more wild bears showed up in their place (Nelson & Herzog, 2005). It is possible that not getting on his plane to leave the Alaskan wilderness when he planned was another mistake that led to his death.

I cannot say one way or the other if anthropomorphism contributed to Treadwell’s death because only he knew if he imagined the bears to have human characteristics.

Technically speaking, bears do have some human characteristics in that they are mammals and they are social creatures so asking a question like that seems redundant to me. The only thing I saw that would suggest unrealistic expectations on Treadwell’s part was when the male grizzly bear had killed a baby bear for his own selfish purposes and he stated that he did not understand how a bear could do that (Nelson & Herzog, 2005). I did not see or hear anything in the documentary to suggest that Treadwell was ever under any illusion that he was safe at any time. He continuously said that he was aware that he absolutely could and would die for the bears and for his lifestyle (Nelson & Herzog,

2005).
Nature is not indifferent to human interests as filmmaker Werner Herzog claims in his narration. Indifferent is not the right word because nature is much more complex than that. Some things in nature are indifferent while others are not indifferent, so nobody can make a totalitarian statement for all of nature like that. Nobody can speak for all of nature. Nature responds to thoughts, beliefs, and actions through the laws of physics (i.e. the laws of attraction and evolution). That does not mean that we can always predict or control the consequences or that nature is indifferent to human interest. The only totalitarian statement that should be made about nature is that it demands and requires both life and death.
Not only is there a third option to Treadwell’s and Herzog’s view of nature, there are infinite views of nature that one can have. I do not believe that there is anything cruel about Darwin’s laws of nature other than how humans have exploited those laws for their own ends. I think anything other than Darwinian laws of nature would be cruel because anything else would be unfair. Anything else would suggest that there is a creator of some sort playing favorites and that we do not have inherent free will.
Treadwell’s and Herzog’s viewpoints on nature are both “subliminal” wilderness social constructions as Cronon would put it because both believe that nature and wilderness are God-like things while Treadwell was also more prone to believe in the “frontier” wilderness social construct where Herzog was not. Herzog’s viewpoint was that of the belief that humans should leave nature alone and that nature is even satanic in a sense like Cronon talks about (Cronon, 1995). Herzog would probably prefer to separate humans from nature. Treadwell also believed that humans and nature were separate, but that humans were the satanic ones while the bears (nature) were the only divine ones. Treadwell felt that what humans had become was evil and that the only real purity was in the wilderness. They both make the mistake of separating humans from nature and thinking of the wildness/wilderness as a specific tangible place