I’m still working on the Alaska travelogue, coming soon! But here’s an update on Brighty. And I’m sorry to report that I wrongly assumed the worst in my previous post about Brighty, melted. This is an example of how incorrect info can be passed on these days. It turns out that the photo I showed of what looked like the melted remains of the bronze Brighty statue was not all of it. That photo came from the Grand Canyon Historical Society on Facebook.
I just learned that much of the statue was recovered intact. See today’s New York Times article, screenshot below. (Note that this link will only open the article for New York Times subscribers. If you want to read the article as a non-subscriber to the Times, contact me and I’ll send it as a gift article.)
As you can see, above, much of Brighty is intact. The report from the Times says that the statue is missing an ear and his two front legs, but otherwise survived the wildfire. The above photo was shared by the National Park Service last Thursday, 14 August 2025. At this time, we don’t know if Brighty can be repaired or whether the statue will be cleaned up and displayed in his post-fire condition.
But this is my first experience, having to apologize for sharing incorrect information. (I mean, sharing as fact things I later discovered were not true.) I strongly believe we must all fight against perpetuating falsehoods. We must revere truth and avoid lying or bullshitting. Part of my goal with the Mind in Heart blog is to encourage everyone to develop skills of truth discernment. We have ways to check out whether something we’re being told is possibly untrue. The internet is rife with purveyors of hoaxes and intentionally faked information. Even AI currently gets things totally wrong sometimes. The even greater difficulty for us is being aware that some images and videos nowadays are AI generated and completely unreal.
Our best hope is to help each other stay vigilant. If a friend excitedly asks you if you heard some viral news story, you might ask if they checked their sources. We must fight against so easily believing things on face value because, for one thing, we want to believe they are correct.
I didn’t want to believe that Brighty was completely melted. But I didn’t fully check my sources. My bad! But, hurray, Brighty is not completely gone and may be displayed again in the future.