Animal Dreams
For thousands of years, humans absorbed the language of animals with whom their lives were intertwined. Might we remember it still?
When you’re learning another language, people say you’re becoming fluent when you start to dream in that language. What does it mean, then, to dream of wolves? Does it mean you’re beginning to speak the language of wind and water and trees, of not being above and separate from non-human beings but a part of whatever intricate web they belong to, something in which human lives play only a small role? Does it mean you’re beginning to listen?
The first time I saw a wolf it was a shadow skipping from spruce forest to spruce forest across a darkening dirt road. This was in Idaho, where a local bar advertised free beer and pizza for any hunter who brought in a wolf pelt.
The second time, the wolf was chasing a young moose across a swollen river, somewhere near the border between Alaska and British Columbia. We were traveling upriver in a motorboat, and we sped past
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