CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Sheltered for many years by federal species protection law,
the gray wolves of the West are about to step out onto the high wire of life in
the real world, when their status as endangered animals formally comes to an
end early this year.
-Kirk Johnson,New York
Times
January 2, 2008
Once hunted to the point of extinction, wolves are returning to the American
West. And they are being treated as suspiciously as Mexican immigrants.
Since 41 wolves were released inside Yellowstone National Park from 1995 to 1997,
the wolf population has soared to more than 1,500 today in Wyoming,
Montana and Idaho.
According to the New York Times article, “The wolves have spread across an area
twice the size of New York State and are growing at a rate of about 24 percent a year, according to federal
wolf-counts.” The problem is that economic development along with the human
population is growing, too.
Because of this and the traditional attitudes of long-time ranchers, battle
lines have been drawn in Wyoming.
After a lengthy court fight, the removal of the gray wolves from the federal
endangered species list will occur in late March and ranchers are understandably
jubilant. But it’s not the West of Bill Hickok or Charlie Goodnight anymore,
and environmentalists and many newly arrived residents are strongly objecting.
Read the entire article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/us/02wolves.html.
Admittedly, it’s a question of priorities, but whichever side of the issue
you come down on, the looming, Paleolithic presence of the wolf can’t be
ignored.
Several years ago, my friend Olivia Redwine and I were down in the village of Mata Ortiz, Mexico,
visiting Juan Quezada, the famous potter. At that time Mata Ortiz was small and
largely undeveloped, not the celebrated center of Casas Grandes style
pottery-making it is now. It was night, the village was asleep and Olivia and I
were outside, enjoying the soft spring air. She mentioned that she had recently
been involved in a project dealing with wolves in the wild, had recorded some
of their sounds and would I like to hear them? “Sure,” I said. She fetched a
cassette player from the truck, placed in on the roof of the cab, inserted a
tape and hit ‘play.’ Immediately, the voice of a wolf in full cry filled the
air. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end and I wasn’t the only one so
affected. Lights came on all over the village. Worried-looking people in their night
shirts appeared in the doorways, intently scanning the darkness. Some may have
been armed.
Olivia quickly turned off the tape machine and tossed it in the truck. We
tried our best to look innocent. “My goodness, what the heck was that?” Now, I
doubt that wolves have roamed the Sierra Madre of north Mexico in any numbers for a century or more, or that any of us, besides Olivia, had
ever actually heard one in the wild. Still, there was something in that howl
that spoke directly to the DNA in every one of us. You didn’t have to be Red
Riding Hood to know that a wolf could eat you.
This being said, I know for a fact that we, the dominant species and
conquerors of the planet, have killed a lot more of them than they have of us. After
all, we’ve been at each other’s throats, tooth and claw, spear and gun, since
the dinosaurs abandoned the stage. Perhaps we’ve evolved the way we have
because of each other.
Whatever our histories, it remains that now that the wolves are a factor
again, we need to be honest and brave, put aside our political convictions and deal
once more with a primitive, deeply ingrained fear.
Looking at Frederic Remington’s 1909 painting, Moonlight, Wolf, might not help.

Frederic Remington, Moonlight, Wolf oil on canvas, C.1909
The composition is starkly simple. The bank of a lake zigzags from lower left
to upper right, concluding in a gap between hills which frames a star-filled
sky. Standing on the shore and squarely facing us, is a Western Gray Wolf. His
eyes shine as if reflecting fire, or, more menacingly still, glow with the heat
of a far more powerful, inner furnace.
Remington, who was one of the most popular American painters and
illustrators of the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
was known largely for his renderings of cowboys, Indians and hell-for-leather
cavalry charges. But it’s his nocturnes that draw our attention these days. In
the decade preceding his death in 1909, Remington produced over 70 canvases
that explore the challenges of depicting the outside world at night. And they are
among the most innovative representational works of his time. In 2003, the
National Gallery of Art presented a major exhibition of these nocturnes,
wonderfully entitled, The Color of Night.
As for our relationship with canis lupus, this composition provides no answers,
but merely poses an old question anew.
And God knows, as a 21st century man, I’d like to live in harmony
with the wolves. I certainly wouldn’t want to shoot one. As a matter of fact,
I’d like to have a wolf-pal who would accompany me wherever I went. Especially
when paying bills. “Gosh, Mr. Creditor, this seems excessive. Caligula and I
were just wondering if perhaps there’d been a mistake.”
So, if you’ve struggled with the political question, examined Remington’s
painting, delved the substrata of your unconscious, and find the spread of
wolves disturbing still, consider a world without them. And without the wolves,
would we still be as human?