Mother Wolf's Dream

I know a wolf. She was born captive in the northern mountains, but her grandparents were free. I taught the wolf to return to her people. For a year we traveled between my cabin and the northern wilderness. And in that time I returned to my people. The circle comes around, and the wolf became my guide. Now my eyes are bright gold like the wolf's, my pupils narrow to a pin prick.

The animals can speak. The wild has not lost her voice, she is calling us. Her voice is in the howling of wolves. And the wolves say, Come home.

A wolf leaps up, placing her saucer-size paws on the chain-link fence and looks me full in the face. Her claws are black as stones, thick fur between her toes. She is the color of milk that stands in a silver pail in the sunlight. A trace of smoke like a shawl of dark fur, lies across her shoulders. Her eyes are as golden as summer and into those eyes I fall. The wolf's gaze melts into softness. Saints and angels must have eyes like these.

The old woman beside me moves restlessly. "She knows you. They always know their own." I glance sideways, curiously, at the old woman, crooked like a broken branch. The little breeze lifts her hair, the color of blood and snow, and blows it around her face. I am surprised at her words. "What do you mean?" I ask. "Mother Wolf knows you. She knows you are a wolf." Turning back to those golden eyes, listening to the old woman muttering beside me, the wolf and I speak in silence.

There are stories that swim in my blood, I know this. But until this moment I had not drawn the breath of wolves down into my lungs.

The wind though, brushing my cheek many times, hints of deeper connections. But blood is there: legends from my Italian ancestors about a city built by twins who sucked at the teats of a wolf bitch; dust that covers the red skin of my other people whom I hardly know. They followed the Wolf Nation, hunted after antelope. Perhaps Mother Wolf sees these things in my eyes and follows the myth into the heart where she digs a deep den and howls to call the pack.

Small sounds come from the dark box in the corner of the wolf pen, slippery little whines. Turning away from Mother Wolf and staring into the darkness, the old woman gestures, leading my eyes towards the box. "Babies. She has two. I don't know what we can do with them. We are closing the rescue center and retiring."

In the opposite corner of the dark pen that holds new life lies a ragged pile of bony fur. I walk over and peer at it. "Father," she mutters softly. "He's dying." I turn from the pen confused, and look into the old woman's watery blue eyes. Mother Wolf leaps on the wire fence, snarling. Her teeth catch it and her jaws seek something to crush. Is she frustrated? Angry because I have turned away? Startled, I turn back to face her. Mother Wolf comes back to me and her eyes dissolve into mine. "What is Father Wolf dying from?" "They are very old. Both are first generation removed from the wild." "Like me," I say to the old woman, still facing Mother Wolf. "The cubs are like me. Second generation removed from the wild."

While hunting for dreams in the high north I came upon this rescue center, lured by an elk in a pasture behind a ten-foot-tall fence. I was driving to put distance between something that is hidden: restlessness, longing and anger. The old people had set up their rescue center with the best of intentions. Things happen that spiral down to entrap. They ran out of money and strength for the work. They have rescued a variety of creatures, from elk and fox, to several big cats.

The old woman shows me around the facility. The cages are small but the animals look healthy. We turn a corner and a lion faces me. His eyes are as yellow as sunflower petals, but not as soft. They glitter against a backdrop of rippled tawny fur. His tail twitches and he throws his stare like a lance. His eyes are not gentle with melting compassion like Mother Wolf. His fierce gaze prods the soul, asking for the give-away, my life for his. If the cage had opened like some great metal flower and the lion sprang out, there is no doubt that he would have killed and eaten me on the hard ground of the rescue center. If I had looked into his eyes as he leaped, I would have relinquished to his asking for the give-away. I would have understood as he pulled claws into me and turned my neck to his teeth. Such power lies in his stalking glance.

Next to his cage is a tiger. The tiger has the spirit of a Buddha. He leans on his cage wire like a lover. I stick my hand through and stroke his head and chin. His whispers are like cactus spines, his eyes are calm. He is like a sweet uncle, absent for a long time, now returned to the family. What had the tiger experienced in that cellar? The old woman told me that when animal services gave the tiger and the lion to the rescue center they were skin and bones. The lion and the tiger -- everyone deals with captivity differently.

I watch the old woman butcher a deer and a young moose. Both had been hit by cars on the dirt roads bumpy and deformed by frost heaves. She swings the ax with wiry arms knotted like pale ropes. With great skill she cuts off their heads.

There are several rescued wolves here. One is black, almost to blue. His eyes are as fierce as the lion's. He holds no courtesy for me or the old woman who feeds him. His family has abandoned him. Wolves bond deep. Their hearts are pulled by ties of fidelity that are like the chivalry of tribe or clan.

The blue-black will never forget his people or forgive his captors. One day he escaped from his human family and went to the neighbor's house and ate some ducks. For that, they abandoned him. What does this wolf think of at night? Does he dream of his human family? Does he bound towards them in his sleep with the generosity of soul that makes humanity look uncivilized?

Mother Wolf whines, a musical sound, and I push my fingers through the mesh and stroke the top of her nose. Her eyes shine through me like sunlight through green leaves. The sky becomes electric indigo behind them. When the old woman brings out one of the baggy warm wolf babies, there is nothing else to do but to take her softly into my hands; her furry form just fits. Mother Wolf paces, staring, her eyes pour gold down my back like honey. Wolf and horse bodies are more familiar to me than my own. When I draw with charcoal or paint, I struggle to remember how my own cheek curves around my face. But a horse or wolf, I know well. When they move, I feel their muscles slide under skin and my spirit settles down to nest within their flesh. The cub's eyes are as blue as the sky blown clear of clouds. In time, this will change. Her coat is a dark storm-gray. The white coat of her mother is dominant, and the old woman predicts that one day the wolf will be white.

"Take one of these cubs." The old woman stands in the thin wind grasping my hand. "Take one..."

Every decision moves you down the trail of life. Move this way and you die young, move that way and you increase somehow. Standing there facing that old woman it seems to be the most natural thing in the world to take the little wolf. While I hold the cub close, I search with the old woman for a crate to put the wolf in. The cub seems accepting of this, and unconcerned, gnaws my hand. When it comes time to leave, the old woman stands and waves from the road. I drive away with Mother Wolf's eyes nailed into my heart.

Driving south, I wind along the spine of the northern mountains pushed up by the arching of the earth's plates that rub against one another like great cats. The backbone of earth runs along North America like a bony saw. The spike heads of mountains poke up frosting over with wisdom and winter. Trees stand tall, comb the fair blue sky. Eagles fly, calling down their high screams. A moose with hair like dry bark that sprouts in scraggly patches, crosses in front of my Jeep. What appeared as a boulder becomes a bear. She sits on her haunches, paws in her lap. The northern people have come out to watch us pass through.

There is plenty of time on this journey to wonder about who I am. The road rises up and promises me news of identity but no signs say which way to go. I have learned to feel the blood pull from the center of my chest like a living compass; to trust the inner guide that points me in the right direction. Perhaps my upbringing has carried me to this place. A Native friend told me that we carry our ancestors on our backs. But I think perhaps they carry us. We are a little raft of living bone and tissue floating on a river of blood going where the current takes us, or paddling frantically upstream.

For hours the road whirls away under the Jeep tires. My mind migrates to the past. I see my father point at the osprey flying over a lake. Granny, now dust, runs backwards beside a creek, a butterfly sticks to her as if trying to bestow a blessing. Perhaps the benediction of butterflies is the gift of becoming something else. The past carries me, sometimes sadly but always with stories I recall of loved ones who are still dead but here. They are balanced somewhere between my ribs and my head. I know how the ancestors would have felt about the little wolf cub. They would have taken her in as well.

A small noise from the crate on the passenger seat calls to me. Pushing my hand into it, a tiny tongue licks quickly over my palm. I rub the little round body and give the nose a squeeze. Another sound splits the air, thin but harsh and abrupt. It is my second passenger in the shoe box on top of the crate -- a tiny black fox. Both animals are ten days old. Orphans caught between the cage and the wilderness. The old woman told me the fox cub was rescued from a fur farm. He protests his captivity with squeaky and loud irritating sounds that fall somewhere between running a rasp over a dull edge of steel and the scream of a puma. The little gray wolf whimpers softly and I see Mother Wolf's golden eyes surrounded by wire mesh.

Loneliness. My father was sick for most of my teenage years. He finally died when I was nineteen. His death was the stab of a javelin. Fifteen years later and I have yet to pull that spear out. If I do, I might bleed to death. My mother lost much of her balance when Pop died. They loved each other. It was like losing them both. After a year she wrenched herself back to life.

Moments can suspend like sand in sea water. The rolling waves of what we call now. Sometimes, I hesitate on the trail of my life; one bare foot on the ground, the other caught in mid-strike. Pause and think in this moment. Am I happy or sad? Bored or excited? Afraid? Feel. If I cannot sense the javelin twisting, I will never know joy. One is the trail marker to the other and they speak to each other in the soft brush voice. I gave the rescue center money for the gray wolf and the fox. Unknowingly, I bought back my soul.

My home in the Northwest is a four-day drive from the rescue center. For hours at a time I drive and the babies bob in their boxes. When we stop for fuel, I mix up their mess of feed -- diluted skim milk and canned meat -- which they attack voraciously. When they are finished, they frantically search for more. Slowly, as we travel, they settle into the rumble, rumble of Cherry, my red Jeep. They begin to warm up to me as they identify me as a relative.

Wolves are social animals, like human beings. I know this from close association with them. I have been a free-lance rescue worker for twelve years, and several wolves have lived with me. My first wolf was Peter, half timber wolf and half malamute and husky mix. Peter is big and joyous, the color of ashes on frost. He is still my close companion along with my dog, Beanie, a blue-gray wiemaraner. Beanie is my resolute dog soldier. Together, the three of us have worked the horse business. We began in Northern California, my first home. Through tapestry hills of ochre and emerald, Peter and Beanie ran horses with me, easily keeping up with my thoroughbreds. We went everywhere together, and still do. They live in the house. Peter sleeps on the floor, most of the time.

In those days, word got out that I had wolves. It was then that the calls began. People phoned to see if I would take their wolf. Wolves and wolf-dog mixes make terrible pets. They destroy everything. At that time, I lived in the country, so I saw no reason not to adopt them; and I could not bear the thought of them being killed. After Peter more wolves came....The adopted wolves became my family....Some I gave to people who thought they could care for them. Others stayed.

Now my newest and youngest wolf whines softly, calling me back to the road. I pull the cub from her box and set her on my lap. In the warmth she falls asleep. Slowly the surrounding terrain changes. The snow-covered peaks dwindle in the distance as we drive through the troughs scraped clean as if caught in the teeth of a great predator. Grass grows here, and round rocks drop from the mouth of primordial-compressed snow.

At dusk I look for a motel instead of camping because of the babies. Finally, one turns up by a lone truck stop. This is the kind of motel found only in the high north -- where people talk to you openly and smell of spruce wanders into all the rooms. I carefully hide the babies in my back pack as we walk to the room. Once inside, I set them up in the bathroom. The little fox can maneuver much better than the young wolf. The wolf cub is much more clumsy and less independent somehow. I name the fox Kip, after a fox in a short story by Farley Mowat. The story is about a Native man who had an Arctic fox as a friend, then later had to sacrifice him to save his family from starvation. An old dilemma for people who subsistence hunt.

Now, to find a name for the wolf cub. Names are important. What you are called can be what you are. A person should have several names throughout life, and a secret name as well. The old woman told me that the young wolf's grandparents had been captured out of the wild in the Mackenzie Mountains in the Yukon. Somehow that worked. Mckenzie, after the beautiful home of her ancestors. I choose not to use the spelling of the name of the white explorer Sir Alexander Mackenzie, partly because those mountains had other names long before he first saw them....

Blockaded in the motel bathroom, Mckenzie crawls to the towels on the floor and starts dragging them around in wolf-like fashion. Kip moves about managing to spread a small amount of dung into a large area. The voracity of their appetite is astounding. Mckenzie straddles her dish with legs that can hardly hold up her plump body and gulps the diluted milk and shredded meat as if she has been starving. Kip is a bit daintier, but he stands in his saucer and smears the food over his body. When he is done his fur stands up in sticky spikes from coagulated food. When I rinse him off in the bathroom sink, he does not seem to mind much. Rubbing him gently with a towel till dry, I put him back into his shoe-box nest to sleep. I am afraid to leave Kip alone with Mckenzie because of the difference in their sizes. Kip, small enough to lie in the palm of my hand, weighs less than a pound, and Mckenzie is a plump five pounds or more.

I lie down and fall asleep. Two hours later Mckenzie is awake and hungry. Her noises drift through the room. When I open the bathroom door, she stands glaring at me. In that moment, for the first time, I realize the nature of Mckenzie the wolf; intense, commanding and inquisitive....

The next morning rises around us like a hundred flags. The colors stand out on the tips of clouds flying before the breeze. The tops of the spruce trees wave gently and the murmuring beckons a reflective state of mind. Something hangs on wind. If I listen words and feelings might become clear. When I carry the babies outside, they drink the breeze down, sniffing it with great interest. The wind lifts the fur on Mckenzie's back as it slips through the slates of her crate. I pack the animals in the car and we head out....

Looking out the windows of the Jeep the land changes around us. Fir, alder and dogwood replace the spruce of the high north. Instead of the high backbone of mountains, there are now tall solitary peaks, the volcanoes of the Pacific Rim. The volcanoes make me think of wolves. There is a gesture among wolves that shows acceptance of a higher ranking wolf's authority. The subordinate wolf turns and exposes his neck to the leader's teeth. It is subtle, performed gracefully and with mutual respect. Volcanoes represent earth's power. So I wonder, shall I expose my throat in the gesture of understanding the power of the land? Mentally I do. With this thought comes peace and I hear the breath of the world whisper, I will always care for you, but there will be change.

The air becomes brighter, the towns are closer together. The day turns around and becomes evening. Again, we stop at a motel, but people talk less here. Morning comes and I still feel tired. I no longer want to drive....I want this trip to be over, to be back on my Northwest island home. There is another day and a half of driving. The route through the land becomes drier. Instead of trees there is a vast grassland scratched by scraggly barbed-wire fences. In the distance lie more jagged mountains covered with snow....

Once over the mountain passes where the trees cling to rocky ground, suddenly, Puget Sound lies before us like a sea of dark jade. There, across the water lies the island covered with thick fir trees. It looks like a whale asleep on the surface of cold water. As we take the ferry across the Sound, the babies are roused by the rich scents flying in the windows. The smell and sounds of the sea are mysterious, as if someone ancient is trying to talk to us. The swish-roar of the sea's waves echo in my veins.

Puget Sound, the younger brother of the ocean, lies inside the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I came to the island by chance. A homey resting place for hunters of dreams. The island's horse people gave me the work I know and I settled down to think things over. Contemplation is an important concept easily missed in the modern world. Things are not meant to shoot by like rockets. They are meant to move clop, clop, clop, like hooves on a hard dirt road while you sit bareback to figure out the trail. Maybe if I am still long enough, questions will rise up like trout after a May fly. Watch! Some of those flies have hooks. I challenge those questions. Til now I only had my knitted cross-country gloves to throw down in the face of what I do not know. But now, a new Guide sits next to me in a little crate. Yet, I still do not recognize her.

If I could reach out with my hand and think long enough, I know I could peel back reality like the skin of a grape. But what would I find? I want to know! Curiosity burns inside me like the smoldering of punk wood. The island encourages these thoughts. It offers an open forum of friends to puzzle over mysteries.

This is where I bring Mckenzie and Kip home.

Teresa tsimmu Martino is a poet and writer. Her first book was Learning from Eagle, Living with Coyote (also available through NewSage Press). Her middle name, tsimmu, was given to her as a child, and is derived from the Yumi word that means "dreams of a wolf." Martino lives on an island in the Northwest where she writes and makes her living as a horse trainer.

This chapter of The Wolf, the Woman, the Wilderness: A True Story of Returning Home by Teresa tsimmu Martino (copyright © 1997, Teresa tsimmu Martino) is printed with permission of NewSage Press, P.O.Box 607, Troutdale, OR 97060-0607; telephone: 503-695-2211 or fax 503-695-5406; $14.95).

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