I obviously wasn’t destined to join the Special Forces but it turned out that I was not destined to make a long-term career of the army either. Instead, it proved to be a valuable apprenticeship for the real job I was going to do in life.
Ever since my extraordinary encounter with that big cream-colored wolf in the zoo near Thetford, I had wanted to see and know more about these creatures that had so preyed on my imagination as a child. I began reading natural history books, and a lot of what I had learned about foxes from years of watching them seemed applicable to what I was reading about wolves. Foxes were being cruelly and systematically persecuted because of a reputation I knew they didn’t deserve; mankind had gone one further with wolves and exterminated them from most parts of the world. I began to wonder whether all the negative stories I had heard about wolves as I was growing up were any more reliable than the falsehoods I had been told about their small, red cousins.
Wolves used to be everywhere. Once upon a time they were second only to humans in the breadth of their distribution across the globe, and when humans were hunter-gatherers, they hunted the same prey as wolves and successfully lived alongside each other, to mutual benefit. They were respected as powerful fellow hunters and given mystical and magical properties. Native North Americans still believe that the spirits of their ancestors live on in the guise of wolves. They won’t sign a treaty unless a wolf, or these days a dog, is present. There were countless legends through the centuries about wolves suckling human children. Romulus and Remus, the twins who founded Rome, were supposedly rescued and nursed by a she-wolf who found them in a basket floating down the river Tiber.
But when man evolved from hunter-gatherer to farmer and wolves started preying on his livestock, the wolf swiftly turned from hero to villain. They were demonized, persecuted, and hunted, in many places to extinction. Despite being endangered, they are still hunted in some parts of the world and still widely feared as savage creatures that hunt by the light of the moon, snatch babies from cradles, and tear Russian peasants from the backs of sleighs.
I had felt such intense and curious empathy with that wolf in the zoo that on the basis of nothing more than instinct, and a habit of identifying with the underdog, I felt an overwhelming need to find out the truth and do whatever I could to help and stand up for these creatures.
It quickly became an obsession. I discovered the Dartmoor Wildlife Park near Plymouth in the village of Sparkwell, which had a pack of wolves, and at the first opportunity I made my way there and got chatting with the keepers. I went there repeatedly on any free days I had from the regiment, and offered to lend a hand at times when they were short staffed. I came to know the owner of the park, Ellis Daw, who lived in an imposing house in its midst, and was soon volunteering to work over Christmas and during other holiday periods when the regular keepers wanted time off. There was a flat in one wing of the house that the keepers lived in and I was able to stay there. Whenever we had leave, and my friends and colleagues went off home to see their families, I went to Sparkwell. I didn’t go back to Norfolk for more than ten years. I felt the wolves were my family.
The park was on a hillside, about thirty acres in all, backing on to Dartmoor National Park. The wolf enclosure was at the top of the hill, running alongside the perimeter fence. It was a small enclosure, not much more than an acre for six wolves, and was fenced with heavy-duty six-foot-high link wire with a double gate to prevent a wolf accidentally escaping when the keepers came and went. Although the area was small, it was quite heavily wooded, and there was a bank toward the back under the shade of the densest trees where the wolves had dug an underground den. Otherwise there was a low rectangular hut by the gate that looked like an air-raid shelter and another smaller structure with a flat roof that the wolves seemed to enjoy lying on during the day. The keepers took carcasses to the animals every few days. Otherwise, their only human contact was when one of the animals needed veterinary attention. The keepers certainly didn’t make a habit of being on the wrong side of the wire for any length of time and no one ever went near the wolves at night. The park closed before dusk and the keepers all went off duty.
It was common practice for everyone going into the enclosure to be armed with a broom handle. It was routine with all of the big predators in case anything went wrong, but the wolves were never threatening. On the contrary, they seemed to feel threatened by us. They panicked when anyone went near them; they tore off to the far end of the enclosure or disappeared underground and only came to their food when we were well away. These didn’t look to me like vicious creatures that would attack as soon as look at you.
Curiosity soon got the better of me. I wanted to get close to those animals and to know more about them and so I started sitting quietly inside the enclosure. I sat there for hour after hour, for several weeks, hoping that the wolves might start to take an interest, as the foxes had done, and come and investigate me. They didn’t. Then I realized what I was doing wrong. I was invading their territory in daylight, when I felt comfortable. What would happen, I wondered, if I switched the odds and approached them, as I had the foxes, at night when they had the upper hand? Might I then get a truer understanding of what those creatures were really about? I applied the psychology I had learned in the army in reverse. I wanted the wolves to feel that they had the advantage and I did not. My colleagues had been astonished by my desire to sit in the enclosure during the day and when I told them that I wanted to go in at night, they thought I was certifiable. But to his credit, Ellis Daw, the owner, whom I had come to know quite well by then, let me experiment.
Even now I have no idea what I wanted from those wolves or why I felt so compelled to get to know them in that way. Maybe it was a voyage of self-discovery, to lay the ghosts of my childhood to rest. Maybe it was because they reminded me of the dogs I had grown up with and I was hoping that I would find some of the comfort and security with the wolves that I had felt with the dogs—and not experienced fully since my grandfather died. Or maybe I was just plain nuts. What I do know is that it upset me that those beautiful creatures found contact with humans so stressful, and I hoped that if they got to know me, I might in some way be able to make their lives in captivity a little better.
One night, when there was a new moon in the sky, I put on an old tracksuit and, taking my courage in both hands, went into the enclosure and locked the doors behind me. I was terrified, absolutely terrified; to the best of my knowledge, no one had ever done this before—and there had been plenty of accidents with captive wolves. There was no way of knowing how these wolves might react, whether they would hide away or tear me to pieces. But I had to know. Enveloped by darkness and stumbling over fallen branches and protruding tree roots, I made my way to the bank at the top and sat down to wait for I wasn’t sure what. It was hard to see and the night was full of strange noises as the nocturnal animals in the park limbered up. But I soon began to relax. The wolves remained hidden in the shadows and gave me no cause for concern. I began to feel comforted by the darkness. As a child I had loved the dark and the noises of the forest; they had made me feel safe as I lay in my bed under the coarse black blanket in Norfolk, and they began to make me feel safe here, too.
Every night for a week and a half I went into the enclosure. I wore the same clothes, knowing the importance of scent from my experience of the wild, although I didn’t know at that time that diet was also important. I was eating normal human food, but as I learned more, I discovered that I had to change. For the first three nights I sat in the same spot; although the wolves kept their distance, I could see that they were beginning to be a little curious. The next night I got up and moved to another part of the enclosure during the night. They immediately