Memento

Too many things happened today to write about, some possibly more relevant, some more uplifting, and all certainly far more to process than I am able to tonight if I want to get any sleep. But I want to write this.

A wolf, an anonymous wolf to most, died today (well yesterday, now). I "met" her from afar, back in 2013, when she was pregnant with her last successful litter and I was living alone in my apartment at Dixie and Dundas, trying to ward off depression and loneliness. At the time I had been deeply enmeshed in Hélène Grimaud's book, Variations Sauvages, and had learned about the wolf conservation center in Salem, NY that she had helped establish back in the 90s. They had several webcams set up at the site, and two of them were also equipped with microphones so that one could hear the music of the forest: a chorus of wolves howling at dusk, the rasp of cicadas' wings, the spurting chatter of birds and small mammals.

Since college I have always found peace and tranquility by going to the forest, away from cities and civilization and people. So it was not really surprising when I discovered that  those sounds inexpressibly soothing when facing very difficult times. I would keep them on at night, falling asleep to wolf howls and waking up as birds awoke. One night I was particularly bad, everything was reminding me of someone I had lost and how trapped and distant I was from everything that I knew, and the only solace I knew was escaping into this window to a forest I could not even access. That day, by chance, she was there lying in the sunset on the mound of soil and dry leaves by her den, resting as her pups grew inside her. I watched her just lie there and breathe, the wind I couldn't feel ruffling the long fur of her coat and tail, her ears swiveling to sounds I couldn't hear, while my mind and pulse slowly stopped racing and the rest of the world came back into focus. At some point she stood, shook herself carefully and began to howl with the evening "wolf mass" and I felt a little bit more like myself again.

Yes; we never met, but this wolf, this life, had an impact on me, as some lives do. I am grateful that she was there and that I had the fleeting chance to appreciate her before she was gone.