mountain hosts visitors as well. Those who come to graze, to find sustenance. Those who come to hunt. Those who come to die. Deer, elk, moose, these solid thick-haunched creatures find plentiful saplings, willow growth, grasses, and plants. Hawks, ravens, turkey vultures, and eagles circle above the mountain, searching out what has died. And the mountain welcomes its top predator, the wolves that trot along its flanks and edges, the wolves searching for the wounded deer, the weary elk, the very young, the old.
This is Aldo Leopold’s mountain, the one that need not fear its deer, its elk, for it is a mountain well-familiar with the howl of a wolf. It is a mountain in natural harmony, full of life, full of death. Decomposition begets new life, the mountain active in each step of the circular process. Leopold, considered by many a father of the conservation movement, described an ecological ethic that resonates with me for its simplicity and inclusive view of the universe. His land ethic
. . . simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land . . . a land ethic of course cannot prevent the alteration, management, and use of these ‘resources,’ but it does affirm their right to continued existence, and, at least in spots, their continued existence in a natural state. In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.
On Leopold’s mountain I share responsibility. Flora and fauna are rife with cellular knowledge telling them how to grow, how to behave, how to participate. Because this is my home, too, I am obligated to sink into my deeper self, to connect with my own cellular knowledge that guides me to think and behave in ways that benefit the earth. I deserve to live among richly varied, healthily functioning, glorious, green mountains, and I accept accountability for their health. I know I am one part of a brilliantly complex, interrelated existence.
Leopold suggested it possible to view the earth as a coordinated whole, its parts—oceans, land, crust, atmosphere, and so on—similar to the organs of a body, each having its own, definitive function. In the 1970s, decades after Leopold’s death, chemist James Lovelock took this a step further and presented his Gaia principle, a theory suggesting our planet was indeed a self-regulating, complex system formed by organisms—biota—interacting with their inorganic surroundings. Joseph Campbell, one of the world’s foremost authorities on mythology, challenged the biblical condemnation of nature, instead seeing man as part of nature, embracing the Gaia principle. He viewed the entire planet as a single organism, human beings as of the earth, the consciousness of the earth. Campbell was adamant that we must learn to again be in accord with nature, to “realize again the brotherhood with the animals and with the water and the sea.”
I am neither biologist, nor chemist, nor naturalist. Nor mythologist. I’ve never called myself an environmentalist. Politically I often sit on a buck rail fence—I picture my pigtailed ten-year-old self perched there—leaning left but never hopping completely off my perch. I pay taxes. I vote. I use canvas bags at the grocery and turn lights off when I leave a room. I compost coffee grounds and vegetable peelings. But my yard is not xeriscaped, and I don’t drive a hybrid.
I care deeply about this earthen world, and passionately about my own small section of it. I ride my bike through canyons and mountain passes in the West that retain some of their wildness. Before daybreak the canyon is dark and mysterious, filled with birdsong, scamperings, chirping, and the silence of a hawk floating through the air, its body silhouetted against a lightening indigo sky. A great horned owl family lives above a bend in the road, and I honor the path where deer cross from eastern hillside to the hollow across the tarmac. The hillside covered in gambel oak where each year I float some of Jake’s ashes is sacred.
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.
