Crossing a Wolf's Trail

In August, my husband, Richard, and I set out for the Pacific Northwest, determined to follow the "blue highways," those slower, more interesting two-lanes that give a feel for landscape and culture, unlike the homogenized territory of the interstates. As we drove north down the Blue River from Silverthorne, Colorado, crossed the Colorado River and passed through Kremmeling, and then wound up Muddy Creek toward Rabbit Ears Pass, I was thinking about wolves.

We were crossing the likely path of one of Colorado's most controversial recent immigrants: Wolf 293F, born in 2003 to the Swan Lake Pack in northwestern Yellowstone National Park and killed in June, 2004, while crossing I-70 west of Idaho Springs, some 420 miles from her natal home.

What was she doing? Searching for what drives us all: love and fortune.

Wolf 293 was just a pup in January, 2003, when biologists attached a radio collar to track her movements. She spent her first year learning wolf ways with her siblings.

She was a year old when she was last located by radio telemetry near Mammoth Hot Springs in January, 2004. After that, Wolf 293 vanished from contact until she was found dead in Colorado nearly six months later.

Apparently, Wolf 293's natal pack had no room for another potentially dominant female, so in her second spring, she struck out to find her own space - a territory and a mate.

Before Wolf 293 ventured into central Colorado on her quest, the last known wild gray wolf in the area was killed in the Conejos Valley in 1945, the victim of a culture that fervently believed that predators like wolves, mountain lions, and grizzlies were evil, symbols of a wild that needed to be tamed to make the world safe.

We still fear wolves, even though for the past century, no cases of healthy, wild wolves killing humans can be substantiated. That they will kill unattended livestock is no question, but then, so will domestic dogs.

Wolves are in fact the ancestors of the pet canids we dote on, from teacup poodles to Great Danes. Some fourteen thousand years ago, we befriended the same wolves we now abhor, offering them space at the campfire and scraps in return for companionship and devotion.

Unfortunately, our "tame" companions are not as discriminating as their ancestors: our pets kill an average of thirteen people and untallied numbers of livestock each year. What does it say about us that we harbor pit bulls, but we cannot tolerate wolves?

Like them or not, we may need wolves to restore the health of our landscapes. Without wolves, elk populations have exploded, stripping ecosystems bare as they eat themselves out of house and home, destroying habitat for trout and songbirds and cattle as well, and setting the stage for devastating epidemics like chronic wasting disease.

In the decade since wolves' return to Yellowstone, elk populations have stabilized, cottonwoods, willows, and aspen have re-sprouted, and landscapes are healthier for all. (And they've spawned a boom in wildlife-watching tourism: wolves are the number one species visitors to Yellowstone ask to see.)

I imagine Wolf 293 on her journey, trotting steadily south along the flanks of the mountains, edging around open basins, and stopping each evening on some ridge to broadcast her yearning calls. She stands, tips her muzzle to the sky, and hurls that rich, full-throated howl across the landscape: "Ooooooooooooooooooo!"

Then she listens, ears pricked forward, swiveling to catch any response. But there is no answering call.

She trots on, hunting, resting, but driven to search for more: home and family. Finally, she is hit crossing the river of traffic on I-70. She drags herself off the highway and dies, still alone.

As Richard and I wound through the sagebrush-clothed hills of northwestern Colorado, I thought about Wolf 293 and her quest. And I wondered what it would take for us to welcome wolves, and the wildness they represent, back into our lives.

This post appeared in a different form in The Nature of Life, my weekly newspaper column and is excerpted from for my essay "Wolf 293" in the anthology Comeback Wolves.

Copyright 2007 Susan J. Tweit

Comments

[Laura]

Susan, I enjoyed this piece, and it reads like something from a nature magazine...personal, yet objective at the same time. I realize that it is already published, but this may also find a home in a nature oriented magazine, including some of those published by non-profit environmental groups.

[Susan J Tweit]

Laura, thanks so much for your comment. I'm so swamped with writing assignments that I'm just focused on meeting my immediate deadlines and not on finding new homes for my work. (I'm juggling assignments from AUDUBON - green roofs, POPULAR MECHANICS - the technology used to track wildlife, YOUNGARTS - a profile of a young dancer that required me to interview his mentor, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and a two-book set on Colorado's Scenic Byway routes that has me exploring landscapes I thought I knew.) But your comments gave me an idea that I'll pursue when I have time to breathe!

Susan
http://susanjtweit.com
http://communityoftheland.blogspot.com