I entered into the heart of the wolf and I felt how the blades drew the very breath from my lungs. I could hear the zinging of the bullets as they exploded from the sky and punctured the ground around us.
The pups were frantically trying to keep up with her as she spun, slipping and falling, suddenly reversing her direction and falling again as she dodged beneath the roaring and clapping of the overhead machinery.
She heard the cracking of his large, strong bones as they shattered and he fell, tumbling end over end. She felt the vibration of life leave his body as her mate dropped instantly dead. For a moment after he lay there, his long, sturdy legs continued his phantom flight. She saw the dark red blood that spread, staining and saturating the place where a bullet had ripped through his heart and where another had disintegrated the top of his head.
If she could get her cubs to the forest they would hide until the men departed from the frenzy of destruction. She knew their intent. I could feel she understood this. She looked around and saw the others. Many of her dearest lay wounded and dead, strewn across the tundra. She began to run in a straight line toward the safety of a forest nearly a quarter of a mile away.
Some believe that animals cannot imagine a future, that they cannot predict beyond the moment, but I can tell you she knew that she would never again frolic in the snow fields, or chase rabbits, or play with the animated and spirited body of her mate. I can tell you she was conscious of his death the moment his last breath left his body. She knew they would never have another day together. And I can tell you that her heart was breaking.
I experienced the horror and panic. I understood that she wanted to carry her pups to safety, distraught because they were too big. I could hear her wailing and howling and barking in my own ears, imploring her pups to run faster behind her. It was powerfully elemental: run to the forest, escape, save yourself, save your pups.
I looked up at the man braced against the opening in the side of the helicoptor. He was held securely by a strap attached to the inside. I saw his "automatic" weapon pointed at her. I entered into his spirit, into his life energy, and I saw this meant nothing to him. It was his job. He was a skilled marksman and they paid him to kill wolves. He believed it was important, in the economy of the great white hunter, to have enough caribou for the tourists. Livelihoods depended on his work. He was merciless, and he would be damned before he gave civilization back to the wolves.
He did it for the state. For every citizen of Alaska. Why should man let the wolves have it? He sure as hell wasn't going to listen to any damned busybody environmentalists who didn't understand that in order to have civilization man must govern and regulate the balances of nature. It was clear to him that without man nature would soon confiscate the land, overgrow the boundaries of his civilized city. No, nature couldn't do without him.
I turned back to the wolf, hoping that by entering her spirit again I could boost her power to outrun the tyrannous killing machine, but it was too late. A bullet struck low on her spine, severing vertebrae and rendering her hind legs useless. She rose up on her front legs and dragged the impossibly dead weight of her body forward, but another bullet struck the back of her head and the world went black.
The helicopter veered away sharply, stirring great clouds of snow and blood and ice into the sky. Then, suddenly, it was gone. I could no longer hear the fainted clipping of its engines. The earth was silent and still. I became flesh and walked through the hideous carnage before me. There were patches of blood, tufts of fur, chunks of dying flesh, shredded from the lifeless forms now strewn across the tundra. The snow lay defiled and blotched with red.
The stillness was broken now by the high-pitched howl of a wild dog. I walked to where she lay, nearly suffocating under the body of a dead companion. I lifted the corpse aside and cradled the pup in my arms. The wound was deep across her back and her blood pulsed from it to the rhythm of her heartbeat. I held her until she no longer breathed, then placed her body next to the other.
This is one small cry that pierces through the death wail now emanating from the earth. It is roaring in my ears.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1997
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited