US AND THEM

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, WYOMING-2025

Slough Creek, February.

Skied in about four miles. Found a pack doing nothing in particular. One of them glanced my direction, about the attention you'd get from a stranger passing you on a sidewalk. Went back to whatever the rest of them were doing. I kept skiing.

That's it. Not much of a story, as far as wolf encounters go.

Shot and trapped and poisoned out of most of the American West by the 1920s. Trucked back down from Canada seventy years later. Elk stopped lounging in the willows all day. Willows came back. Beavers came back. Rivers stopped cutting themselves apart. A lot to put on one animal.

He didn't look like he knew any of that. Didn't look ancient, or wise, or like he was carrying some thousand-winter stare the documentaries like to dub over these guys. Looked like a big dog that had somewhere better to be.

Four miles back out felt about the same as four miles in. Nothing revelatory on the ski home. I didn't feel different. He didn't either, probably.

Us and Them.