I don’t want to lose one scintilla of this experience. I know I am one with the earth. I’ve been riding and hiking canyons and mountain passes for years, taking for granted that they will be here for me. That more cabins will appear and a road might be widened, but that overall, these canyons will retain their wildness and bounty. And that wildness includes top predators. Grizzlies and wolverines and mountain lions. Wolves.
Most Americans know wolves only through fairy tale, fable, and myth, and more recently, through the controversy raging over their status as a protected, endangered species, their reintroduction in 1995, and their loss in 2011 of protected status in portions of many western states. We don’t know what it’s like to live with wolves, but according to polls and surveys, we want them back on the landscape. Whether because we want to hear their howls or because we find them to be charismatic creatures or because we believe they have the right to exist, the majority of us want them back. And they are coming back; the question now seems to be, for how long?
Those who don’t want wolves on our landscape are fierce and vocal. Many are backed by well-funded organizations such as the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. Stories and fables proliferate, some growing more fantastical as time passes. Facts are bandied about, figures abused. What began in 1966 with the first Endangered Species Preservation Act and manifested in 1995 as a reintroduction of an extirpated species has deteriorated into, at times, a playground battle of name calling, rumors of conspiracies, and figurative if not actual fisticuffs. Legislators vote for increased control, even when state wildlife departments have data proving wolves kill few domestic animals, and reduce prey animals by almost statistically insignificant numbers. Hunters and their organizations argue that wolves are reducing elk numbers, without controlling for weather, where the land is in terms of fire cycle, and other predators on the land. Disheartened, I’ve studied pictures of men, many triumphantly holding bloody wolf carcasses, one posing in front of a wolf whose leg is caught in a trap, a ten-foot circle in the snow stained pink with its blood.
A century ago we shot, poisoned, and trapped wolves out of existence. We’ve always done it this way is not a justification for abusive practices, whether that abuse is of animals, of other humans, or of the land. We live in an era filled with new discoveries and understandings of that which surrounds us: scientists point to plastics, coal, and toxic wastes as destroyers of our air and land’s ability to support us. Fewer trees and less soil mean decreased carbon sequestration. A warmer earth is killing polar bears and pika. To close our eyes and ears to these understandings is both foolish and harmful, and I believe we are too smart, too creative, too capable to continue ignoring good science. When we can find wilderness—even small spots of wildness—and become still, we better understand the importance of our surroundings. We can better hear our conscience.
Humans have always changed and will continue to change the landscape. Historically, Euro-Americans annihilated humans and animals that were in the way, justifying their actions from a platform of “white man was meant to rule.” We now face consequences—ecosystems in disequilibrium; a thinning ozone; landfills overflowing with refuse that takes hundreds of years to break down, while leeching toxic chemicals as it does—resulting from that stance. Having wolves back on the landscape won’t change the economy, will probably not save the rainforests. It won’t stop new fossil fuel extraction, and won’t solve water issues in the West. But it is a correction. An apology.
Liz Bradley knows all of this. The history, the current political environment. But her parting words are of hope, echoing Leopold’s conviction. Love and appreciation of the natural world guides us toward better decision.
We’re in Montana, and I want to look for wolves, not just talk about them. But we’ve run out of time. I will return in the fall to explore the Blackfoot Watershed, a community of ranchers, with a range rider. I picture a ruggedly handsome man on a horse, clad in chaps and a big old hat. He slouches in his saddle, crow’s feet crunching, the anticipation of a smile dancing on a corner of his mouth. He is dauntless. He searches the watershed for wolves. He gallops over fields and moseys up draws, protecting sheep and cattle from predatory canine teeth, bared and sharp. Out there, somewhere, are wolves.
Ice recedes at the river. Days grow longer. Sophie gives birth to two pups in her scooped and sculpted earthen hollow. Soon one no longer breathes. She digs a hole. She buries her pup. It will not be eaten by other predators. Another male wolf joins their small pack; they are now four.
Ice builds again, then retreats. Sophie gives birth to six pups—three male, three female—and the pack explodes to ten. A small gray-brown male searches the den, sniffing, pawing, yellow eyes gleaming. Green grasses grow tall, shadows short. Yellow Eyes follows the breezes, a hare’s musky scent, nose in the air then to the ground. A spotted snake stops him, hissing, snapping. He jumps and runs back home. The days lengthen. Yellow Eyes trails a red fox kit, a ground squirrel. A magpie crashes through branches, wind sends leaves tumbling. Nose twitching, he runs, captivated, a hundred different scents competing for his attention. His mother’s howl sings in the distance. He turns, the sound guiding him home.
The Tetons hold snow like treasure, buried under overhangs, beneath trees, in shadowed gullies. Sheer cliff faces are cold, gray stone. Some drip black with snowmelt. Jagged edges slice the air and mirror what within me is rough, defiant. We’re suspended eleven thousand feet above sea level, and the highest crags thrust another thousand feet into the sky. Jackson lies a vertical mile below the belly of our plane. Mark speaks into his headset and Kirsten responds, a muffled blur of sound. I cannot speak, a bubble of awe in my throat. The three main peaks of the Grand Tetons—Grand Teton, Mount Owen, and Teewinot—are the loudest of the range. Its other voices are no less resonant, though, and as we float, I see the sinew connecting them, the vales, the ridges of bone. The discordance gives rise to harmony, and I want to remain here, in this air, beside this massive disruption of earth.
Two hours later the wheels of the Piper Cherokee touch the Salt Lake City runway, and we chug to a stop by the hangar. We unload, pack everything into the back of Mark’s wagon, and slide my bike on top of it all. I’m headed home.
There are two in there, she says. I immediately accept this, as if I’d known these past four months that I’m carrying twins. It’s February, 1991. Bob leaps up in delight, dances around the darkened ultrasound lab. The technician moves her wand, clicks the mouse, measures, labels. You can clean off your tummy, she says, I’m all done. Bob hugs me and helps me sit; he’s glowing. I feel a bit larger than I did before.
They’re identical, and one is just a smidgen smaller than the other. Unusual in identicals, but not worrisome. They’ll keep an eye on it, and compare the discrepancy with next month’s ultrasound. I christen the big one Hoss, the smaller, Little Joe. I loved Bonanza.
The size disparity increases over the next two ultrasounds, but by the time I’m asked to come in for a test, Little Joe’s heartbeat is gone. He’d kicked the night before, perhaps performing his final somersault. The following day my body begins laboring, and at just shy of thirty-two weeks, my twin boys are born. Hoss is whisked to the ICU while I hold Little Joe. He is tiny, a few ounces over three pounds. He is dusky, no oxygen to blush his skin. His eyes, behind closed lids, must be blue, like Jake’s. I cradle him against me, tears flow. The obstetrician flicks her needle back and forth, repairing my skin, and, when she’s done, touches my knee. Tells me the nurse will take Little Joe when I’m ready. Ten minutes, twenty. I eventually release him to Bob, who hands him to a nurse, who carries him to the bowels of the hospital where his small, human form will be collected by the mortuary. We name Hoss, Jake, and name Little Joe, Joseph: he was going to be Andrew, but we’ve only ever known him as Little Joe.
I’d been in labor all night, and delivered the boys at nine on a gray, rainy morning. The loss, the death, the shock