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.
I remember reading about your driving into Yellowstone, though I didn't remember that it was with Vaillant. I thought of you that morning because I knew I would cry if we actually saw and/or heard wolves. Except I didn't because I had my hands a bit full with the little one. But her face -- Chris, I wish you could have seen it. The wolves have an absolute ally there.
I have started Floating Coast 3 times. I need to be in the right headspace and haven't quite gotten there yet. But fundamentally, yes -- and worse almost, it doesn't *have* to be like this. Coexistence isn't that hard; we just have to accept limits and kinship. Which is hard for too many but doesn't have to be :(
I wonder if anyone’s asked her about that. I asked a close journalist friend once who reports from war zones and was in the middle of a horrible domestic story at the moment, and she very much weighted the “bearing witness” aspect, which I appreciate but doesn’t seem like enough.
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.
This is all very well said. I'm not totally sure of whether nature agrees with the human perspective, but only because the human perspective can be so varied, and in some iterations agrees more with nature (and even perhaps wolves) than our dominant culture makes room for.
You've really summed up the whole point of this newsletter quite nicely, though, the spaces where our various needs and desires rub against one another, and how we reconcile those differences, or don't. It's an inevitable reality of sharing a planet, or a universe.
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!
It is so hard sometimes to envision what this land was like when buffalo roamed at will and in such numbers. Like a heartbeat of land-memory.
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 feel the same way every time I read yours 💕
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.
I remember reading about your driving into Yellowstone, though I didn't remember that it was with Vaillant. I thought of you that morning because I knew I would cry if we actually saw and/or heard wolves. Except I didn't because I had my hands a bit full with the little one. But her face -- Chris, I wish you could have seen it. The wolves have an absolute ally there.
I have started Floating Coast 3 times. I need to be in the right headspace and haven't quite gotten there yet. But fundamentally, yes -- and worse almost, it doesn't *have* to be like this. Coexistence isn't that hard; we just have to accept limits and kinship. Which is hard for too many but doesn't have to be :(
Floating Coast is relentlessly brutal. It's brilliant, but I don't know how she managed to pull it off without losing her sanity.
I wonder if anyone’s asked her about that. I asked a close journalist friend once who reports from war zones and was in the middle of a horrible domestic story at the moment, and she very much weighted the “bearing witness” aspect, which I appreciate but doesn’t seem like enough.
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.
A heart massage is a great way to describe it! It feels that way to me, too. I know I'll turn to it again and again. And I'll be looking up his art.
I really need to get into Barry Lopez again. Maybe as wintertime closes in it'll feel right.
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.
This is all very well said. I'm not totally sure of whether nature agrees with the human perspective, but only because the human perspective can be so varied, and in some iterations agrees more with nature (and even perhaps wolves) than our dominant culture makes room for.
You've really summed up the whole point of this newsletter quite nicely, though, the spaces where our various needs and desires rub against one another, and how we reconcile those differences, or don't. It's an inevitable reality of sharing a planet, or a universe.