What’s Bringing Me Joy: A Wolf

On the importance of public lands, public schools, and chance encounters

When the Department of the Interior which manages public lands and parks, our sacred inheritance, is having its budget slashed by billions so the administration can build more prisons for migrants and deport people to Libya; when public lands are on the chopping block I have to remind myself that the purpose of Inner Emigre is both to try and make sense of the strange times were living in and to help people find joy in their everyday lives.

So I am going to tell you about the wolf I saw last Saturday. I got into a car Saturday morning with a woman I didn’t know well, a forty-something teacher and former raft guide from Canon City named Abby. We’d met once at a crag while climbing, but we were practically strangers, so as we drove we made small talk.

I asked Abby about the public school where she teaches. She told me that one of the downstream effects of alt-right’s distaste for higher education is that fewer and fewer kids value even a high school degree. Enrollment is down. “When a teacher retires, we just don’t hire a new one,” she said. Kids are taking classes online, or just dropping out entirely, no longer seeing the point.

“You have access to all the knowledge in the world if you own an iPhone,” I heard Mike Rowe the host of the TV show “Dirty Jobs” say on Theo Von’s podcast. Of course, most of us don’t use our iPhones to study quantum mechanics or read great books or learn to play the guitar, we often use them to watch three second videos.

Without some direction, you don’t know what to search for, where to begin. And school teaches more than subject areas. It also teaches life skills like showing up on time, working with people you wouldn’t choose, meeting deadlines. Or to put it succinctly, grit. All qualities I looking for in hiring staff. At its best, school gives you membership in a community and a sense of purpose. Maybe you’re in a play, or on a team. Abby tells me kids need adults to mentor them and I agree. We are silent for awhile watching the world go by.

It’s an 80 minute drive to Devil’s Head Mountain in the Pike National Forest. When we arrive, it’s nine o’clock in the morning, forty-nine degrees, and sunny. Spring in Colorado. The friends we were supposed to meet are running 20-30 minutes late, so I walk into the forest to pee and look around. It’s lovely. I notice: the smell of rain, the cold damp air, the meandering trail covered with pine needles, the way the sun dapples the path. It’s chilly so I find a patch of sunlight to sit in and let the sun warm my face.

The forest is alive. I hear three distinct bird calls, as well as crickets, and a woodpecker working on a tree. Something is barking above my head. I look up and see two chipmunks chasing each other from limb to limb. They’re playing or fighting. I’m not sure which. I left my phone in the car, which is unusual and nice. My hands are free.

I have nowhere to be, so I try my hand at “forest bathing,” a term I learned about watching the Tokyo Olympics. Forest bathing is wandering in a forest and asking yourself: “What do I see? What do I hear? What do I smell? What do I feel?” Some doctors prescribe this for well-being in Japan. After a few minutes I sense it’s working. I feel immersed, like a visitor in a holy place. If it wasn’t so cold I might take off my shoes.

And then, out of my peripheral vision, I see a huge white and grey animal. My brain is dull and slow to comprehend. I think, “That’s not a dog, it’s too big. It’s not a fox, foxes are red. Is that a coyote? It’s big though.” And slowly, I realize that what I am observing is perhaps a wolf. It steps lightly, crossing one leg in front of the other, as it traces a downhill path in my general direction. I’m transfixed. It’s graceful and beautiful and real and outside myself. Close to me. Yet, unaware of me. At about ten or twelve feet, I feel a shiver of fear. “That is a wolf!” So I stand up and try to look big, and not at all tasty. The wolf sees me and freezes. I stomp my right foot to make a sound, and it turns on its heel and bounds away. I am so happy.

Meeting a predator alone in the woods feels like a universal human experience, like a story that has been told a million times. It’s like giving birth, or reciting poems with three generations present, or falling in love; it’s the the kind of things that humans have been doing and telling each other about for thousands of years. There’s communion in that. A sense of connection with people across time and space.

The encounter also reminded me of the swerve, of randomness, that life can still surprise. Good things can happen for no apparent reason.

I also felt gratitude that in 1892 someone set apart this land, so that I and others could experience it. People are capable of destruction, but we are also capable of stewardship and repair. Wolves, once hunted to near extinction, were recently reintroduced to the wild though legislation voted on in my home state.

Maybe the happiness I felt was as simple and universal as this: The wolf could’ve eaten me, but it didn’t. Still here.

I walk back to the car to meet up with Abby. Steven and Tiffany had arrived, loud and funny with two dogs in tow. We exchanged hugs and then hiked toward the granite cliffs we’d come to climb. I found myself walking behind them at a distance. Maybe, if I stayed open and on the lookout I might see something else. I saw: yellow flowers blooming on scrub oak, the backside of Pikes Peak covered with snow, three hawks circling, and a burbling spring that I almost stepped in because it was hidden under brush.

On the first climb I was scared to do a relatively easy roof, still getting used to Abby as my belayer and being back on granite. But while siting in my harness I saw a bright blue beetle with black polka dots and whooped for joy.

Sometimes the world doesn’t feel real. Probably, I'm on my phone too much. Are the tariffs going forward or paused? Is this photo real or AI? Words once solid, feel evacuated of meaning. Do conservatives still believe in low taxes and limited government? Is Christianity still a religion that judges its adherents based on how they feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, treat the imprisoned? When I feed my kids, or watch them run at meets, or go to a protest with a friend, the world still feels real.

In the forest on Saturday everything was real. I could hear Steven as he belayed me from the ground. “It’s just like the gym,” he said. I started repeating his words like a mantra as I led the climb. “Just like the gym. Just like the gym.” It was way harder than the gym, but having a friend on the other end of the rope encouraging me made me feel lighter.

I was so gripped at one point that I yelled “falling” while trying to clip the rope tied to my harness into a piece of protection. I didn’t think I could hold on any longer, but I was wrong. I had underestimated myself, and somehow, I clipped in. We laughed. As I clipped the chains at the top of the climb I said, “Thank you.”

Maybe joy is part awe, part fear, part gratitude. The wolf could have attacked me, but it didn’t. I could have taken a big whip, but I clipped in just in time. Death and rebirth.

On the drive back, from the front seat of Abby’s car, I saw a bobcat, right by the road. “That’s a bobcat!” I said like an eight year old. “I am having a very good animal day,” I said. And Abby said, “You really are.”