I think of wolves. Over the past 30 years I have come upon three wolves in the wild. Somewhere I have a photograph of me holding a soft wolf puppy born in captivity. By now it is dead. It never became a wild, free wolf, but, rather, lived enclosed, a prisoner, crippled in the life evolution designed it to live, a slave like a dancing bear.
Most readers grew up with Little Red Riding Hood, the Three Little Pigs and the big bad wolf. Everyone has heard the expression "the wolf at the door." And those of a literary mind know the opening of Byron's great poem "The Destruction of Sennacherib": "The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,/And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;/And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,/When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee." In these and other fairy tales and works of literature and in the unexamined perception, the wolf represents man's fear of aggressive evil, destruction and death to man.
The unexamined perception, like the unexamined life, lacks a certain substance. The astute Don Quixote, whose unexamined perceptions are unrivaled in literature, said, "Fear is sharp-sighted, and can see things under ground and much more in the skies."
Mindless fear is used to justify violence, as even a cursory glance at man's history and current events shows. The rancher/sheep herder who kills a wolf because the wolf is dining on his resource is making a business decision. He may or may not be in league with the mindless wolf killer who is filled with unexamined, pathetic fear. This outdoors version of the street bully is imbued with the unevolved, superstitious mentality of the Middle Ages when wolves were thought to be in league with the forces of evil.
So far as I can find (and I have looked), there is no documented instance in history of a healthy wolf attacking a human being. If anyone reading this has reliable information about a wolf attacking a human, I would appreciate seeing it. Fear of wolves seems a great mystery among many other mysteries concerning man's superstitions, beliefs and behavior. It deserves more examination than it has received, especially in today's western America where the wolf has been re-introduced after having been annihilated by men consumed with unexamined perceptions and fear of the big bad wolf, cloaked, of course, in the transparent robe of machismo.
The first wolf I saw was in the Wind River Range of Wyoming in 1975. I was surprised, thrilled and pleased, for it was said that the last wolf in Wyoming had been killed many years before. But there it was, a confident, healthy wolf on its way to somewhere, completely unconcerned and uninterested in me and my mates. Its natural poise and very existence filled me with hope and inspiration and the awareness that is only found in the presence of the truly wild. That wolf had a heritage and biological entitlement to this land we call America preceding by tens of thousands of years those of anyone reading this. I felt honored to see an original, indigenous American, highly respected by Native American cultures for its skill as a predator, for its 'family values' and model of social behavior which included the welfare of companions. If a wolf could still survive in the murderous (for wolves) ranching/guided trophy hunting culture of Wyoming in that time, what other miracles and hope for life could be possible? Peace on earth? An end to world hunger? Universal health care? An educated populace? A balanced budget? Truth? Justice?
The second wolf I saw was in 1980 in the Pamir Mountains where Russia, Pakistan and Afghanistan border western China. We were in a van on a torturous dirt road just inside the Chinese border when a wolf loped across the road and moved up the rocky, barren hillside. We stopped and watched him through binoculars for several minutes, marveling at our good fortune. This wolf was lean and skittish and had the look and demeanor of the hunted and the hungry, similar to the indigenous Muslim tribal peoples of that part of the world. Their land had been invaded and occupied by the late-arriving Chinese, whose only environmental ethics that we observed were distilled into the quip, "If it doesn't move, eat it; if it moves, shoot it." Again, I felt honored and given hope, inspiration and awareness by the sight of a wolf in the wild.
And I saw the third wolf last month on a snow-covered ridge in Idaho, where fewer than 300 of them have a tenuous existence with the conservative ranching/hunting/gun-loving culture that dominates the Gem State. He was moving diagonally and away from me and stopped to check me out. I did the same and dropped my pack to get my binoculars. Perhaps having experience with my species reaching for tools more invasive than magnifying vision, he picked up his pace but stopped a few times to see what I was doing. Such curiosity could kill the wolf. As it was, I watched him move along the ridge, stop to look at me and then pick up his pace and vanish over the other side.
I took off my skis, sat on my pack and ate a sandwich and drank hot tea before skiing down. Seeing the wolf was a thrill and a totem, a touch of and connection with the wild, a reminder that we need the wolf and the wild even if they do not need us.
