Wolves
The story of Francis and the wolf of Gubbio occasions the author’s trek into the Absaroka Mountains near Yellowstone, entering a territory where gray wolves have thrived since being reintroduced the 1990s. The inordinate hatred of wolves in Western thought is contrasted with Francis’s concern not to kill (or even to tame) the wolf, but to welcome it into a larger family where all species can thrive. Over the centuries the wolf’s stealthy elusiveness has led us to project a sinister quality onto these extraordinary animals. Barry Lopez speaks of our theriophobia, our irrational, deep-seated fear of the “beast.” It evokes an impulse to kill what we don’t understand. Yet gradually we’re learning to appreciate wolves without demonizing (or romanticizing) them. By the time Aldo Leopold wrote his Sand County Almanac, you could discern a shift in societal perceptions of apex predators. He spoke of grieving as he knelt beside a wolf he had shot, watching “a fierce green fire dying in her eyes.” He also noticed how the absence of wolves allowed the deer population to explode, with every edible tree stripped of its leaves.