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<\/a>Susan Imhoff Bird\u2019s new memoir, Howl: of Woman and Wolf<\/em>, has all the depth, complexity, and moving power of that most haunting of sounds: the howl of a wild wolf. Alternately joyful and mournful, lyrical and pragmatic, this hybrid tapestry of memoir and wildlife historiography offers equally keen views of the science and art of gray wolf recovery efforts, the people who love and loathe this highly symbolic species, and the beautiful bricolage of a life lived interestingly: births, loves, deaths, and the search for self-in-place that is the pith of experience. Inventively framed by the epic journey of wolf OR-7, AKA \u201cJourney,\u201d who made history by being the first gray wolf to venture into California since the species\u2019 extirpation from the lower 48 states in the 1930s, this book journeys<\/em>. Bird shows us that the gap between tameness and wildness, between two highly mobile, adaptable, social, and intelligent land predators\u2014wolves and we, self and other\u2014is not so far as it might seem, and we ought to venture across to find out how wild feels.<\/p>\nBird\u2019s canine muse is a study in cultural and ecological enmeshment, an ideal exemplar of ardent preservationist John Muir\u2019s observation, \u201cwhen we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.\u201d Crucial to ecosystemic health, the wolf benefits everything from scavengers like magpies and ravens to trout, songbirds, beavers, willows, and aspen. And the wolf is just as culturally powerful as it is ecologically: whether big and bad, huffing and puffing, stalking hapless young women in red as they stroll through the forest, or viciously murdering dozens of sheep and cows \u201cfor sport,\u201d the wolf\u2019s folkloric resonance is as outsized as its effect on ecosystems. If the wolf is a symbol of rapaciousness for many, so too is it a symbol of noble, pure wildness for others, and neither metaphorical vestment may be an entirely good fit. In the end, what characterizes the human relationship to the wolf and to ecosystems alike is complexity: a tangled mass of associations and relations that stretches out in all directions at once.<\/p>\n
In this memoir, wolf and woman alike unfold in the fullness of complexity: boundaries are few; connections are manifold. Bird moves effortlessly between searingly heartfelt and honest narratives of marriage, childhood, pregnancy, birth, divorce, travel, death, exploration, conversation, connection, separation, and the fumbling states in between. We learn of the birth and always-fragile life of the author\u2019s son Jake, born with cerebral palsy, and the simultaneous stillbirth of Jake\u2019s womb-mate, Little Joe. Little Joe and \u201cHoss,\u201d the in-utero name for Jake (the author confesses a fondness for the television Western Bonanza<\/em>), are yoked together by conception, yet separated by the simultaneity of birth and death. Paradox. Like all the nature writing greats, Bird is after essence: Edward Abbey\u2019s bedrock and paradox, Terry Tempest Williams\u2019s intimacy with land and with folk. What is at the center, and what radiates outward? Where do we fit, and how do we relate? With whom, what, and in what landscape do I\u2014should I\u2014dwell? Paradox beautifully animates the many strands of this deftly-woven braid: the fact that we as a species cannot seem to live with or without wolves, the fact that the very relationships we need (such as a nurturing relation to self) are the ones we run away from, the fact that we are willingly herded into stockpens of meaningless work while craving meaning and wildness, the fact that we live but do not always live<\/em>.<\/p>\n Alongside Bird\u2019s biographically-rich experiential and existential musings, the author offers a thorough history of the gray wolf, particularly after its 1995 reintroduction to Yellowstone and central Idaho. She parallels and punctuates key moments in wolf recovery with moments in her life: kids\u2019 growth and movement toward independence, her own developing sense of self, needs, wants. Ultimately, we get the story of wolves, well-told, and the effect is an education on a singular animal and an identification with a singular storyteller. Through countless interviews, cast as deeply personal ventures into the making of knowledge and connection to place, Bird offers an admirably complete picture of a creature that seems perpetually to be in the crosshairs of science, myth, and memory.<\/p>\n As Bird reminds us, the kind of field-based ecology on which most wolf science is based is an unbound and often chaotic enterprise. It\u2019s exciting, too, a fact the author relishes as she interviews folks like legendary wolf recovery project leader Doug Smith and others whose lives are fully lived outdoors in pursuit of information about\u2014and connection with\u2014the gray wolf. As befits such a sometimes-swashbuckling scientific style, ecologists often turn to metaphor (think \u201calien,\u201d \u201cinvasive,\u201d and so on to describe non-native species like the Gypsy Moth, the Zebra Mussel, or the Russian Olive, species that are vilified despite their lack of volition in the matter: we are the alien, the invasive, the weed<\/em>). Metaphorically, biologists often refer to the gray wolf as a \u201ckeystone species.\u201d Just as an arch would fall without a keystone, an ecosystem can collapse without the balancing influence of an apex predator.<\/p>\n The wolf is the architect of what biologists often call a \u201ctrophic cascade,\u201d or a reorganization of energy in a foodweb. It goes like this: the gray wolf\u2019s presence disperses elk herds. The newly pursued elk leave off their munching of willows to the ground, and willows rebound, creating dam material for beaver. Erosion is subdued by new beaver lodges, trout subsequently flourish, and songbirds return to the aspens, which are recruited in greater numbers when elk stop denuding them. Bird, too, cascades through her many forays into the field and complementary forays within. She gazes at wolves through a spotting scope, rides horses with anti-wolf dude ranchers and hunters, rides shotgun with Montana wildlife managers. She risks life and limb traversing the snowy miles between Salt Lake City and Montana in the icy grip of winter, experiences the exhilaration and freedom of riding a bike on sweeping canyon roads followed by the rude awakening of body hitting pavement, and spins a tale of love that is, I think, worthy of a slow, meditative read punctuated by one\u2019s own journeys outside the comfort zone.<\/p>\n That is the keystone paradox at play here, deftly written in lyrical prose: finding what lies within while fearlessly finding what lies outside.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n