Following Wolf Tracks: In the Presence of Wolves
I could tell many stories of wolves. Stories of bodies, lean and strong, moving swiftly across the road in front of a van full of teens — five running as one, as though in slow motion. I could tell the story of unwavering eyes watching a group of humans kneeling close in the fragrant carpet of low-growing forest plants, or a tale of the pack alternately crouched, snarling, head-up-dominant, then feeding on the carcass of a freshly killed elk in a wide, flat meadow just off the dusty road. I can feel those stories beneath my skin, but they are not my own stories.
I have never seen a wolf in Idaho. In five years worth of leading wolf tracking expeditions, I have heard them and smelt them, read the movements of their bodies in wolf tracks they left behind, felt the electricity of their near, but hidden, presence and sat with them in my dreams. As I weave these stories — my stories — I feel again in my body what I do not need (almost do not want) to see with my eyes: them.
When I travel back in my mind to the first time, I come to a moment so sharp that I can still feel the dry heat and smell the dust of the road and pines — hear the sound the river makes where it flows between jagged cliffs. It was the last day of a full week, my first, tracking wolves in Idaho. So full that I didn’t want or need to see any more wolf tracks — they were there and we were there and that was more than enough. The teens I was with seemed to feel the same way, content to lay half-in and half-out of the creek building dams of pebbles. We returned to the van, near which we had seen fox tracks in the early morning. I remembered thinking, when we first saw them, of the relationship between foxes and wolves.
My urge to wander carried me across an uncharacteristic expanse of flat sand to the edge of the pines below the cliffs. There, I noticed large compressions like inverted cones; no clear wolf tracks, just the marks of something big having passed. I followed the trail heading back toward our van. When the nature of the sand changed from deep and loose to a hard crust, the wolf tracks themselves suddenly jumped out in relief, the shape of toes and heel pad formed by the sand grains left behind as the wolf placed each foot. The baking sun had not yet blended the colors of loose sand and hard sand, and the breeze had not yet altered the perfect shape of the wolf tracks, and my mind felt like it had ceased to function, unable to believe what it was seeing.
The trail of wolf tracks led to the bank above our van where the animal had sat for a time (moments? hours?) before rising again to turn off at an angle to the woods. It was there beyond the edge of the trees, somewhere. Close and watching or moving out across the landscape; I couldn’t tell. I was pulled, by it or its energy or my own curiosity, along the trail — and then, suddenly, not. My whole body was like a spring, poised to follow, except for my heart, which turned me determinedly back toward the van. We were down to the wire, 15 minutes late in fact. We had been exactly as close as we were supposed to be.
On another last morning we came across fresh, loose, dark scat — the kind that is made of digested organ meat, the first to be consumed. The scat was in the middle of the road. A few yards further, we came across a stark story of life and death: Crossing the road were the tracks of a running elk, and straddling and running parallel to the trail of the elk were two long drag marks, at the end of which were tracks of the hind feet of a large wolf. After a few minutes of adjusting our eyes and using our imaginations, we could see the wolf fastening it’s teeth into the running elk as though we had been there… and we had. The scene took place less than a quarter mile from our camp, but we had heard nothing in the night.
I awoke in the cold dawn to the low moaning howl of an animal I have never seen, but that seems to move constantly around the edge of my perception, and stood in broad daylight listening to wolves in all directions, completely immobilized by a palpable energy that I cannot explain. I do not think it is awe or worship or idealism. It is just that there is something wild. It is just an existence — a being that is both familiar and other. There was a fist-sized remnant of meat, so fresh I could have just pulled it out of my refrigerator in spite of 90 degree heat, and a pool of un-coagulated blood in the body cavity of a just-killed and already consumed deer with unglazed eyes. Not a symbol of the great dance of life and death, but the thing itself. Spread before us on the pine needles something more real than the reality I build around myself most weeks of the year. It was late, again, and time to turn our backs and give space to whatever was out there.
In successive years I’ve amassed more stories of not seeing them.
The energy of these experiences has begun to follow me. Like a good story, it gets under my skin, and like the wolves it stays on the periphery, only sometimes making its presence obvious. At times I am reminded, and I close my eyes and go back to those experiences to revisit that feeling. Other times it shows up unexpectedly, and suddenly I am seeing through eyes that are not my own, feeling muscles that I do not use.
One night I slept beneath the pines of Idaho on the shores of a creek I love. While friends slept nearby, I dreamt I looked across the creek and into the eyes of a wolf on a log that stretched toward me over the water. Within leaping distance, its head was lowered and its eyes were holding mine. It did not move towards me and I knew that it would not, but I was not making the decisions — nor could I. With blood hammering in my ears I woke to the cold and dark. As my heart slowed I could hear the pounding feet of a deer criss-crossing camp and the squeals of many elk downstream — and something else moving. Maybe.
It seems that these wolves have become a symbol for me, a truth about which I have mixed feelings. I can talk happily about wolf tracks, behavior and ecology and the politics surrounding their presence or absence in various places. I have seen wolves in other states hunting and devouring, and lounging about in the sun on top of snow. I feel strongly that given the necessity of “managing” wolf populations and dancing through the network of strongly opinionated and starkly opposed political interests, we need to not idealize these creatures just as they ought not be demonized.
However, it is due to the nature of my experiences with the wolves in Idaho — specifically not seeing them but merely knowing and feeling their presence — that I have touched wildness and mystery that leaves me speechless in the moment and altered long after. If that’s not a symbol for my psyche and my soul, than I don’t think I have either. And next time I am walking through a narrow meadow and feel the air grow thick in that particular way, I will probably, once again, turn and walk away.
4 Posts in Total
