Another varied and fascinating column, amazed at how much ground you can cover. One wolves, yes your summary is very much how I feel, and have been chewing on it for awhile. I feel saddened by all large predators predicaments (and buffalo, I am just back from SD, where we visited Custer State Park, and we read that at one time there were 30-60 MILLION of them on the continent!). Large predators and human expansion creates sad conflicts. And btw, Elizabeth A sums up EXACTLY how I feel. Thanks!
I've kept coming back to this post, reading it again and again. So much to ponder and absorb and learn. I am so grateful that you're out there writing and canning and not canning.
I was with the writer John Vaillant in Yellowstone the first time I ever saw wolves; it was his first time too. What an amazing experience.
I've just finished listening to Emma Marris's wonderful book "Wild Souls." It is lovely and frustrating in how people interact with animals. Same with Bathsheba Demuth's "The Floating Coast" that mostly just made me wish people would simply disappear from the planet. It's all so heartbreaking.
At least when I returned home and was unloading my car the local coyotes were out in the fields raising a ruckus. That helped.
Thanks for finding and posting that George Bumann video of the Junction Butte wolf pack. I played it several times this morning; it was like heart massage. Your post made me think of the first time, many years ago, that I read Of Wolves and Men (or as I call it, Of Wolves and Men and Women), by Barry Lopez. I'm very happy to see wolves in Yellowstone again.
Your letter this week finds what any other person might call disparate threads which actually seem to weave together well. Humans have this bent toward property and territory, whether private or group-owned. The wolves disagree with the human perspective, as does the rest of nature. Whenever we seek private property or private control we end up spending some fraction of our energy in protecting that and it ends up costing someone or something else their well-being and liberty. We have a problem with scale that in some realms of thought might be called a mental illness. As a species we've grown beyond a healthy population and range as we've learned to ignore that we are part of the world instead of the lords of it. When we learn to give more than we take we will find a greater peace.
Another varied and fascinating column, amazed at how much ground you can cover. One wolves, yes your summary is very much how I feel, and have been chewing on it for awhile. I feel saddened by all large predators predicaments (and buffalo, I am just back from SD, where we visited Custer State Park, and we read that at one time there were 30-60 MILLION of them on the continent!). Large predators and human expansion creates sad conflicts. And btw, Elizabeth A sums up EXACTLY how I feel. Thanks!
I've kept coming back to this post, reading it again and again. So much to ponder and absorb and learn. I am so grateful that you're out there writing and canning and not canning.
I was with the writer John Vaillant in Yellowstone the first time I ever saw wolves; it was his first time too. What an amazing experience.
I've just finished listening to Emma Marris's wonderful book "Wild Souls." It is lovely and frustrating in how people interact with animals. Same with Bathsheba Demuth's "The Floating Coast" that mostly just made me wish people would simply disappear from the planet. It's all so heartbreaking.
At least when I returned home and was unloading my car the local coyotes were out in the fields raising a ruckus. That helped.
Thanks for finding and posting that George Bumann video of the Junction Butte wolf pack. I played it several times this morning; it was like heart massage. Your post made me think of the first time, many years ago, that I read Of Wolves and Men (or as I call it, Of Wolves and Men and Women), by Barry Lopez. I'm very happy to see wolves in Yellowstone again.
Your letter this week finds what any other person might call disparate threads which actually seem to weave together well. Humans have this bent toward property and territory, whether private or group-owned. The wolves disagree with the human perspective, as does the rest of nature. Whenever we seek private property or private control we end up spending some fraction of our energy in protecting that and it ends up costing someone or something else their well-being and liberty. We have a problem with scale that in some realms of thought might be called a mental illness. As a species we've grown beyond a healthy population and range as we've learned to ignore that we are part of the world instead of the lords of it. When we learn to give more than we take we will find a greater peace.