Living with nature

I wanted to share a few lines from Jim Brandenburg's book Brother Wolf: a Forgotten Promise  (1993).

"We wild ones are now very few. You made the woods small. You have killed many of us. But I still hunt, and I feed our hidden pups. I always will, I wonder if the tame ones who live with you made a good choice. They have lost the spirit to live in the wild. They are many, but they are strange. We are few, I still watch you, too, so I can avoid you." 

In the beginning of this book. there is a foreword by Canis Lupus, Brandenburg writing from the wolf perspective. This forward makes me cry and feel hurt that we, as people, have destroyed the natural world around us. It examines when wolves were plentiful and humans were few and the narrative writing envokes human empathy for the wolf. We talked about this fact almost a year ago now, the use of narrative to convey science. Brandburg's forward to me does do this successfully. Not that I want people to be upset, but rather understand how the relationship to the wolf and our natural world has changed. Although not filled with 'science' from records this forward does reflect the history of the wolf in our country. 

I started reading this text for my book list to put as part of my project. I have already ordered this text from Amazon, in the mist of writing this blog entry. It explains Brandenburg's journey to photograph wolves in Minnesota. I have not read the entire thing with my rental from the library, but I feel as if someday I will want to finish it. It also has over a hundred of his photographs, which are amazing and capture all parts of the wolf (the good, the bad, and the ugly).