last century, we wouldn’t allow wolves to be part of our environment. Now people and organizations throughout the country are working to live in the same space with wolves. Wildness can coexist with my more tame self, just as wild creatures can coexist with humanity in the same landscape.
We look for wolves the next day, early morning, late in the evening. We see none.
Snow lies thick on the ground, frozen on pine needles. She sleeps in a curl, nose tucked under tail. Her body warms her body. Last spring’s pups are almost yearlings, nearly as large as Sophie. Almost capable of joining the hunt. Elk forage for food in the valley below. A calendar would say it’s January, 2008. A map would place her in west-central Idaho, near the Sawtooth Mountains. And biologists would say she was a two-year-old female that belonged to the Timberline pack. Her stomach is full of yesterday’s elk, and she rises on stiff legs, sniffing the air in the pre-dawn dark. She straightens her forelegs and bends chest to ground, her pelvis high. She arches her back and lifts her nose. She howls. The sound floats on the frozen air. It slips into the trees. Walking from pup to pup, she nudges shoulders. She nudges each yearling, her mother, her father. They sleep. She steps away. She moves into a trot, and runs steadily west.
She turns north, then west again. She traverses a mountain, arrives at a cliff. Far below, a river. Chunks of ice pile on both banks, and the swift water flows green under thin sheaves of ice growing in from the edges. She picks her way down, paws finding purchase on a rock, in a crevice, on a wind-buffed shelf. She reaches bottom and she swims the frigid river, its current pressing her body downstream. She hauls herself onto the frozen bank. Shakes. Water flies a dozen feet, freezing as it lands on snow, on deadwood tossed from the river, on the rocks that have tumbled down the cliff. Up. She climbs the other face of the deepest river gorge in the country, pausing only once to look back upon what she has left. A cartographer would label this Hell’s Canyon, would neatly print Snake River on the twisting ribbon of blue. He would print Idaho on the right side, Oregon to the river’s left. She continues west, then north, follows curves of land. The river here is less strident. She scents elk. She stops. A researcher for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife would document her as one of the first wolves to step foot in Oregon in over sixty years, would know her river as the Imnaha. And when she finds her mate and gives birth to pups just months from now, the researcher will call her new family the Imnaha pack.
Green shoots crouch beneath winter-gray sage and shrub. A mist, white and translucent, rolls over a ridge, hovers, and disappears into the morning. Later the cloud of fog returns, then rolls away as I turn my back. It’s June, but the fifty-degree weather feels like I’m in some mysterious, mountainous land where the inexplicable can happen at any moment. I’m in the Lamar Valley, searching a hillside of hummocks for coyotes.
“See that tree?” Pete says. “Follow that line to your left, where you see that green vale, then follow it up, about halfway up that sagebrush rise, then there’s that little dirt patch; there’s the den.”
I find the tree easily, but the dirt patch eludes me. Pete’s scope is mounted on a tripod, and he beckons me over. I put my eye to the eyepiece—squint the other shut—and lean close to eliminate peripheral light. Coyote pups seem to leap into existence from the grassy hillside, their light brown limbs tangling and separating and finally sorting themselves into six different bodies. They frolic, nip and push, halt, turn a head to an elder. They run and leave the frame of the scope, rendering the hill green once more. I turn from the scope and scrutinize the hillside. I try to find them unaided, and fail. I still can’t find that dirt patch.
“They’re out of sight again,” I say, and Pete hops over to scan for the pups. He finds them within seconds, and adjusts the scope. He steps back, offering views to the rest of us.
We lucked into Pete this morning. Doug Smith had told me Pete was out here working with Rick McIntyre, somewhere. What Doug hadn’t told me is that Pete Mumford is young, energetic, and gorgeous. Mark says he’s a nice young man, but Kirsten and I have nicknamed him Jesus, for his curling longish blond locks, his piercing blue eyes, and his manner, gentle yet authoritative. Disciples would follow this man anywhere.
Those blue eyes are steadfast and focused as he responds to questions, and a few days’ beard growth runs cheekbone to exquisitely formed chin. A thick headband holds back golden hair, sunglasses perched atop, and his acid green down-filled jacket shows a month’s exposure to pollen, wind, and weather. His tan Carhartts are battle marked, and he wears brown-laced hiking boots and a communication device velcroed into the harness strapped across his t-shirt-covered chest. Slim-hipped with a skier’s physique, lean and muscled, he radiates energy and enthusiasm.
A member of the Wolf Project team for only the past month, he describes his job much like McIntyre’s, to help people see the wolves, to manage crowds and traffic situations when needed, and to stay on top of what’s termed citizen science—opportunistic data collection from the near-constant supply of wolf watchers. (In addition to the daily crowd of wolf watchers who provide information, a number of wolf watchers use radios to communicate their sightings to Rick, providing location and behavior information that adds to Rick’s immense collection of wolf observations.) A native New Yorker, Pete graduated Cornell in the winter of 2011 with a degree in Natural Resources, then moved west to work on a bison vegetation study in Yellowstone. The following winter he volunteered to help with the annual winter wolf study—he describes this animatedly, his arms up, hands pointing to his head and shoulders, “look, free labor”—and got his foot in the door.
I peek again at the coyote pups, then step back from the scope to let another watcher look. Squealing erupts on the hillside, a veritable yip-fest, and we all smile at each other.
As the yips fade I turn back to Pete and ask what he likes about being part of the Wolf Project team. His eyes grow huge.
“Are you serious? Who wouldn’t be excited to be doing this? Wolves? For me it’s the total package—they can run forty miles an hour, they’re graceful, can go three weeks without food, they’re amazing. The eccentricities in their dynamics keep us curious, and guessing, and what a great way to work.”
Pete moves to the back of his truck and brings out his wolf-finder divining rod. He waves it around in every direction. The antenna searches for signals emitted by the collars that many of the park wolves wear. Each collar has a separate frequency, and Pete scans for the wolves of the Lamar Canyon pack. No beeps. The antenna goes back in the truck.
Pete talks science, biology, and his eyes lift skyward momentarily before he responds to my more politically probing questions.
“The work isn’t about liking wolves—it’s about law, and science, and best practice. Do you know the McKittrick story?” Pete asks.
“No,” I shake my head.
“He shot one of the first collared wolves released in the reintroduction, Number 10, back in April of 1995. It was barely a month after the wolf and his mate had been released from their holding pen. The day before the shooting, Chad mired his truck on a muddy hillside where he’d planned to hunt for black bear. The next morning a friend helped him free the truck, but before they left the area they noticed a large animal uphill, some kind of canine. Chad grabbed his gun and even though his friend said hey, maybe it’s a dog, Chad shot and killed the animal. They hiked up to the body, and when they reached Number 10 and saw the radio collar, they panicked. They dragged the body downhill, then unbolted the collar from the wolf’s neck.
“Chad wants the skull and the pelt, so he skins the carcass and dumps the body in the brush. The friend wants Chad to turn himself in, promising
