Beaded Buffalo

“To look into the eyes of a wolf is to see your own soul…” ~ Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

Trapping is an odious pursuit. What makes it even more repulsive is a technique known as case skinning, wherein the animal’s hide is peeled off like an old sock. Put another way, the critter is turned inside out.

So the fact that I possess a pelt from a gray wolf that was both trapped and case skinned is perplexing. All the more confusing is why this pelt has come to possess me.

The wolf came to me in a most urban manner: I found it on a rack at a downtown used-clothing store. A friend mentioned having seen “the oddest thing” while shopping for ties, and the next thing I knew, I was standing in the store, staring at this glorious pelt sandwiched between stained London Fog raincoats and soiled NFL-logo jackets. Once this magnificent creature bounded through the snowy Northwoods, piercing the night with wolf song, then pricking its ears to listen for replies on the wind. Now, a hang-tag dangled from one of its crumpled ears, suggesting that it would make an ideal wall hanging or rug.

I bought the pelt. It was an unsettling purchase tainted with guilt, so I kept telling myself I was rescuing it. A few days later, a hunter friend examined the skin and noticed a roughed-up spot on the right front leg. “Leghold trap,” he said. Then he pointed to a blueberry-size hole between the eyes. “Twenty-two,” he said, as in a .22-caliber rifle.

“Probably from Canada or Alaska. Those are the only places wolf trapping is allowed, at least legally,” he said as he examined the skin further, eventually concluding it had belonged to a female.

I’ve heard trappers say that today’s barbless leg-hold (or “live capture”) traps are humane, painless. I’ve also seen animal-rights groups’ videos showing trapped coyotes frantically thrashing about, their captured limbs bent at grotesque angles.

I hid the skin in a closet, but the wolf kept invading my thoughts. I saw my trapped wolf pulling, pawing and digging at the earth, struggling and snapping at the unyielding iron jaws pegged to the ground. I saw her eventually lying in the dirt, exhausted, her parched tongue hanging from gaping jaws. She panted and waited, until the trapper returned and his bullet found its mark.

In the ensuing months, well-meaning friends offered advice. One said he’d buy the wolf and free me from an obligation he couldn’t fathom. Another suggested we travel to the Northwoods and leave it with its living brethren as a peace offering. But I can’t part with it, because it’s not finished with me. I came to realize that this isn’t a simple case of species guilt over what “my people” had done to this animal and her kind. There is a deeper meaning, a message trying to play out.

When it comes to life’s most revealing mysteries, it can take years—a lifetime sometimes—before meaning creeps out of the haze of perplexity. A wise man patiently waits for such clarity, but I was impatient, so I started searching and soon stumbled across a description of one of the more noteworthy man/wolf encounters: Aldo Leopold’s tale of shooting and wounding one for sport, then watching its life slowly fade away.

“We reached the old wolf in time to watch the fierce green fire dying in her eyes… There was something new to me in those eyes– something known only to her and the mountains. I was young then and full of trigger-itch. I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer that no wolves would mean hunter’s paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.”
~ Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

That single episode so moved him that from that point on, he viewed all wild creatures and the land they inhabit as precious things worth saving. He heard a “wild, defiant sorrow” in each wolf howl and realized the cry held a “hidden meaning…long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men.”

There was a hint of an answer: My tie to this wolf isn’t meant to be “perceived among men.”

I kept digging and learned that some native peoples do have an inkling of what it all means. The Tlingit of the Northwest, for instance, say the wolf can shed its skin, revealing its true nature as a human being. Others believe that when you show wild animals proper respect, even in death during the hunt, they bestow a gift, a link to the Great Unknown that becomes a source of eternal wisdom.

So far, I haven’t been blessed with eternal wisdom, and the only conclusion I can draw is that I probably kept the pelt from becoming a beer-stained rug on some guy’s rec room floor. Beyond that, a few things have surfaced.

There is a link between humans and wolves, and people like Jim Brandenburg know this. He’s spent most of his life photographing, understanding and living amidst wolves, and he describes this connection as being stronger than the bond between man and ape. To back up his contention, he points out that the wolf’s cousin lives in our homes, and we’re comfortable with this notion because we, too, are wild at heart. Like good dogs, we deny our true primal nature and act tame to suit societal roles—until we wander into the wilderness, where we get a brief taste of the feral. It’s why we go backpacking and hiking: to reclaim the primitive and balance out the modern.

“On the ragged edge of the world I’ll roam, and the home of the wolf shall be my home.”
~ Robert Service, The Nostomaniac

Wolves are dream animals that wander through our nocturnal musings, our thoughts and fears, our tales and myths, all the while defying our sense of sight. Once while in Kootenay National Park, British Columbia, I shared a damp trail with a wolf and followed its tracks. But as grizzled, wily backwoodsmen have told me, the wolf itself will not be seen. It will only be heard, and always in the distance. The wolf is more an animal of the soul than of the land.

Native peoples believe human existence is inseparable from the plants, animals, Earth and sky that comprise the Great Mystery of life. All things are part of the eternal cycle and possess an intimate kinship that carries special obligations. So what is my obligation to this wolf? To show respect to an animal that suffered a bad death, and honor its spirit in a good way? To realize that in those times when I feel trapped and hopeless, my spirit remains strong and unyielding? To always be reminded that the untamed hides deep within us? Or to simply wait patiently for more wolf sign that points to answers?

“Who knows what impresses you, what drives you to keep pursuing a dream?” Brandenburg asks. Who knows. The answer is Out There somewhere, along a trail, deep in a forest, half-hidden in leaves layered under a weathered old tree that’s seen its share of mysteries unfold. It’s the reason we keep lacing our boots and striking off into wild lands: the answer lies in the quest.

“Wolves are not our brothers; they are not our subordinates, either. They are another nation, caught up just like us in the complex web of time and life.”
~ Henry Beston, author

A version of this article appeared in Backpacker Magazine.