Wolf Worthy

May 22, 2015 Holly Hertel 2 Comments

It occurs to me, as I map my story arcs in preparation for editing my last chapter, that a big theme in my book is whether I’m worthy of wolves or not.

Interestingly enough, this doesn’t come up for a lot of people.  But I had a friend in high school (which is pretty incredible considering how shy I was) who loved wolves because they were so noble.  Thinking back, I was of the mind that I would not want to be in a club that had me as a member (ala Groucho Marx).  In other words, wolves were too cool for me.

But she had started something.  Over the next few years, I didn’t really think about them, but they were in the groundwater of my psyche, so the thought of them, not leaving me alone, percolated up in my last year of college.  I was almost finished with my biology degree when I had to pick a subject for my senior paper and presentation.  I picked communication within wolf packs.  What the heck?  Where did I get that?  Out of the blue seemingly.  Yeah, right!

I don’t know how I found that topic, but, once I did, something about communication in a small community really grabbed me.  And the community had to not be a human one.  And no I didn’t really voice this out loud to myself or even in my brain.  I just gravitated to this information about creatures that seemed safer than humans.

Years later I realized that I was trying to figure out my family and why we weren’t very close.  In my middle age, I graduated to finding out about humans when I went through therapy, and then I read all the Jane Austen novels.  Those books, that take place in the Regency era of England, to me are about communication and appropriateness in a small community and I ached to know how to “do” social interactions.

As I learned more and more about wolves, I still considered them too cool for the likes of me, especially the day I learned that they hated encountering humans and were so wily humans might live within shouting distance, or I should say howling distance, of them all their lives and never have seen one.  My esteem for wolves grew.  When I found out that they didn’t want me in their club, I was hooked big time for the rest of my life.

Imagine the paradox, and my good luck, when I was expected to raise three wolf pups during my job at the captive wolf study.  I was ecstatic and in awe.  And they were just little goof-balls wanting to love me.  I learned a lot from them including how to interact socially and howl together.  I ended up spending quite a few years translating that into my human community but the time was worth it.

And my worthiness?  It doesn’t really matter much to the wolves, of course.  But it does matter to me, because it allows me to hold my head up in society.  My work with wolves helped me start knowing that I was worthy.  And also to know that I don’t need to belong to any club at all, if I don’t want to.