In the Moments of Lucidity After Coffee

As I sit and write this piece - seven years after I wrote another piece entitled "Why Wolves Matter, and Why I Paint Them" - and thirty years since I played my small part in bringing Wolves back home to Yellowstone - my heart and my head still battle for control of my pen.

My head wants me to write about the environmental success story that the reintroduction of Wolves has been, and continues to be. My head wants me to write about how, in fact, Wolf reintroduction is the single most profoundly successful, and important, reintroduction of a Native species (or of ANY species) in this country's (checkered) history of ecological stewardship. My head wants people to understand how Wolf reintroduction has benefitted virtually every plant, bird and animal species in the Park - bringing balance back to a seriously UNBALANCED, artificial/natural landscape.

My heart, on the other hand, wants to wring the pen by the neck and vent - unleashing a string of expletives undeleted - for my heart and I get pissed easily when it comes to certain human behaviors toward Wolves. My heart and I struggle with the cruel imbalance of it all.

For while there has been so much to celebrate in the past thirty years since my brother and I offered Ceremony to welcome back, and adopt, the first group of Wolves to roam the Park in almost 70 years, my heart has nevertheless been broken countless times by the barbarity of a cult of hateful human beings - people bent only on removing every Wolf from the landscape, and doing so in as cruelly a manner as possible.

That's all I'm gonna say about those people - for now, anyway.

CAN'T HOLD A CANDLE

My good friend Rick McIntyre has the distinction of being the one person on the planet who has spent more continuous days among Yellowstone's Wolves than any other human being.

Rick's knowledge and understanding of the Park's Wolves, and of many individual Wolves' families, family histories, character traits and personalities, is absolutely unparalleled. NO ONE holds a candle to Rick's experience-based knowledge of Yellowstone's "top dog."

His books about these Wolves are must-reads for any thinking human being interested in preserving balanced, viable, and thriving natural systems for our great-great-grandchildren. These books of his are also being re-written as a series of four childrens books, and I have the great honor and pleasure of creating the inside illustrations for them (not the cover art). For the first book, "The Unlikely Hero," I was also asked to write the Afterword - another honor that I was happy to accept.

STILL WITH ME?

So, during the Summer and Fall of last year I had the opportunity to offer bi-weekly presentations/lectures about Wolf reintroduction - and about the cultural and personal significance of Wolves - to tour groups from all over the country. In giving these talks, I borrowed heavily from Rick's books - his stories, experiences, personal history and encounters with Wolves - as well as so many of my own. And in EVERY presentation that I gave, the transformation in the faces of those in the audience was visible, as they were exposed to a wider and deeper and more familial perception of Wolves. Instead of locking Wolves up in their childhood memories of the "big bad," with all that "huffing and puffing" and eating gramma and blowing down little piggies' homes - they began to see Wolves as ancient relatives to which we are all inexorably connected - deserving of respect and deeper understanding. Many people came up after the presentation and said, "I just didn't know." It was as if a candle had been lit in some unknown room of their hearts, kept dark for too long.

And it gave me hope for the future of Wolves. And for my grandkids' future.

OF FUTURES PASSED

It has taken us thirty years to get here, but exactly where is "here?"

Today, a relatively small number of uninformed, self-serving and biased individuals have a "big say" in whether or not Wolves can even have a safe and predictable future on a landscape in which they (and Indigenous Peoples) have walked hand-in-paw for thousands of years. And when it comes to the sociopolitical landscape surrounding Wolves, there is no balance; for when it comes to Wolves it's all either black or white - there is no grey area - they are either loved to death or hated to death. 

I have learned a lot about Wolves - learned a lot FROM Wolves - just by quietly being in their presence, in their space.

One thing I've learned for sure is that they really don't want anything to do with human beings. And they certainly don't want, or deserve, our love or our hate. Or our fear (the father of hate). They only want (and deserve) to be left alone to live their lives and raise their families and do the job that Creator gave them in the beginning: keep the balance.

Like so many of us, I believe they just want their freedom to be.

SO, WHO WON?

As usual, my heart won the battle for control of the pen.

You know, it's been said that the pen is mightier than the sword. But even a sword is useless in a room filled with darkness.

I would rather have a candle.