Page 58 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2

"This Letter to a Yellowstone Wolf February 2014

Joan Kresich

I felt I needed to write to let you know our meeting wasn’t what I would have wished. It’s true I’ve

been imprinted with the classic images: you in a ruffled granny cap salivating through slick teeth, or

closing in on Jack London’s northwoods fire. But I never took those to heart.

I would have wanted an encounter of equals, two creatures passing in the copse of vulnerability, pared

down to sinew and synapse, the copper wires of our wits holding the whole thing together. One of

those meetings where energy and mass trade places in a flash of eyes. A meeting where everything

funnels and explodes in the same moment.

But the way you paused and turned your lowered head to look back at us made me think you felt

pursued. Why did you stick to the ribbon of road? We never saw where you came from, just rounded

the bend and there you were. We slowed the car and waited for you to take off across the snow, but

you kept loping along the pavement. A few cars passed you going the other way, and you just moved

over, and kept to the road. We could see the gleeful faces when they passed us.

So this was our meeting: you loping ahead, us rolling along in our bubble of amazement. We had time

to wonder: were you banished from a pack? Was there a fight? You seemed fatigued, and yet you

kept going, never rested. Why?

You have your history, and we ours. When was it we parted? Once, we inhabited the same land, the

same territory. In that time, I would have understood the bargains you made to stay alive. Ribs

undulating across your flanks would ignite a flash of recognition and kinship in me. Cold bursting in

upon my lungs would remind me how the same cold was shocking yours. My empty stomach would

tell me how hunger massed the last resources of your body to search for food and how it kept you

riveted to your prey.

You weren’t wearing a collar like some of your Yellowstone kin. Every pack is named, every wolf

numbered. (I have to admit this numbering makes me think of other human counting schemes: digits