Of Wolves and Men

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The cold sits down like iron here, and the long hours of winder darkness cause us to leave a light on most of the day. The following paragraph goes on to flesh out this imaginary scene, and the sentences are rife with figurative language: “The wolf’s body, from neck to hips, appears to float over the long, almost spindly legs and the flicker of wrists, a bicycling drift through the trees, reminiscent of the movement of water or of shadows” (9).

Of the twenty-three subspecies of wolf (too many to be meaningful) that taxonomist Edward Goldman identified in North America in 1945, seven are no longer around. Most white wolves are found in the north, though Lewis and Clark and many mountain men, explorers, and immigrants reported large numbers of very light wolves on the Great Plains in the early 1800s.

An alpha animal may be alpha only at certain times for a specific reason, and, it should be noted, is alpha at the deference of the other wolves in the pack. Humankind's relationship with the wolf is the sum of a spectrum of responses ranging from fear to admiration and affection. It was not, astonishingly, until the early 1940s that anyone took a serious, scientific look at wolves, and in some parts of Eurasia (where they are still regarded as beasts of blood and darkness) specific information on their numbers, locations, and habits is lacking even now. If that is so, I wonder what it is we know in fiction that is as true as what Lopez knows of wolves. What happens when a wolf wanders into a flock of sheep and kills twenty or thirty of them in apparent compulsion is perhaps not so much slaughter as a failure on the part of the sheep to communicate anything at all—resistance, mutual respect, appropriateness—to the wolf.

I think, as the twentieth century comes to a close, that we are coming to an understanding of animals different from the one that has guided us for the past three hundred years. A good author paints you a picture so you can imagine the places, colors, expressions, textures, with all the fine details. The author s third book and one of his best known, an acclaimed study of the wolf in nature and in human culture. Wolves commonly go without food for three or four days and then gorge, eating as much as eighteen pounds of meat in one sitting. In this astonishing portrait, Barry Lopez draws upon an impressive range of natural history, scientific fieldwork, and traditional folklore – along with his own personal experience living among captive and free-ranging wolves – to reveal the curious, controversial nature of Canis lupus .He suggests spending time with people who “ come from a different time-space and, who, so far as we know, are very much closer to the wolf than we will ever be. By Miocene times, 20 million years ago, these two superfamilies of carnivores, the dogs and cats, were distinct, and the more recognizable ancestors of the wolf had emerged. But taxonomic distinction among wolves is probably most valuable for the way it distinguishes among factors other than size and color. Wolves vary their hunting techniques, share food with the old who do not hunt, and give gifts to each other.