I'm experimenting with my mobile post app, and while the posts are a bit spare, it allows me to more easily check in from the road (or my reading corner).
Ever-fascinated by writings on humans vs. nature, I recently picked up Barry Lopez's book, Of Wolves and Men, long on my wish list, and have just begun to graze the pages:
It is a convention of popular sociology that modern man leads a frustratingly inadequate life in which hunting becomes both overcompensation for a sense of impotence and an attempt to reroot oneself in the natural world. As man has matured, the traditional reason for hunting-to obtain food- has disappeared, along with the sacred relationship with the hunted. The modern hunter pays lip service to the ethics of hte warrior hunter-respect to the animal, a taboo against waste, pride taken in highly developed skills like tracking-but his actions betray him. What has most emphatically not disappeared, oddly is the almost spiritual sense of identification that comes over the hunter in the presence of a wolf.
Here is an animal capable of killing a man, an animal of legendary endurance and spirit, an animal that embodies marvelous integration with it's environment. This is exactly what the frustrated modern hunter would like: the noble qualities imagined; a sense of fitting into the world. The hunter wants to be the wolf.
Hmm.
The wolf crisis continues near Yellowstone Park this year as eight research wolves, five collared, have been killed by hunters just outside the park.
I'm in constant receipt of conflicting information about the wolf situation. I'm always grateful to hear from those who live in Wolf Country and are willing to accept reestablishment of the species, and show a willingness to work with conservationists to creatively problem solve.
I'm also grateful for those of you working with your local organizations, Defenders of Wildlife, and The Nature Conservancy on behalf of the wild creatures and open spaces.
Here's hoping 2013 will find a shift in legislation and human hearts, so that the wild can remain wild for the next generations to witness.
