# A Wolf and a Wish _Howell Creek Radio address for February 21, 2012 -- _ We've had a very warm winter this year, as you may know. Between Thanksgiving and now, we've only ever had a dusting of snow. Temps have for the most part played around 40° F. The whole state is becoming spoiled, you can overhear it at the grocery store or wherever people congregate. "We're getting spoiled," they say, after in the same breath expressing dread for an upcoming dip in to the low twenties. Before the leaves had even fully fallen, Trixie and I told each other we wouldn't really mind at all if we had a warm, mild winter with very little snow this year. For my own part, I think I wished for the warm mild hard enough that I am not surprised at all at its having been granted. Still, we are already looking forward to spring and summer, when we can get out and go for the walks, plant the tomatos and take the drives that we didn't have time for before the house was finished. A couple of weeks ago a voucher was offered for sale, for half off a stay at a bed and breakfast in Lanesboro, MN, thus answering the question of what to do for our first-ever Valentine's Day together. It was a two and a half hour drive down to the place, and our dinner in a nice restaurant was another twenty minute drive from the bed and breakfast to another small town close to the Iowa border. In that area, you can be cruising along on the planet's surface, across wide, rolling, iced-over farm fields and under a wide-open starry sky, when the road suddenly turns a steep bend into a valley, dropping you below treetops which you had unknowingly been looking right over a minute before. You descend below trees, brush, cliffs, out of reach of the sky, slide along the river for a few minutes, and then shoot back up again. It turns out that Lanesboro is a summer town. The place is positively sleepy in winter; most of the shops are closed from November until March, and many of the restaurants are only open two days out of the week. There are rivers which you can't tube down in the winter and there are trails along the rivers which you can't bike in the winter. It turned out to be the perfect time of year to go. * * * I was pretty sure I wasn't going to go around to the store until after I had heard from Jason, who had had the idea of my buying the wolf in the first place. The wolf was my totem, he said, some kind of animal that is part of you or connected with you at birth. The real thing would be for me to meet one in the wild and speak to it, spirit to animal spirit, he said. I'd just heard on the radio, while driving home from a job interview, that wolves had been doing so well for themselves lately that they would be coming off the endangered species list, and people would soon be allowed to shoot them again. It had consoled me strangely at the time -- not because the wolves were doing better, but because it made me realize that with improved prospects come increased dangers, and that consequently a life near extinction might sometimes enjoy certain benefits. This was before Jason had stared at me, and declared that the wolf was my totem. We were in town, and I'd noticed a new wolf in the taxidermist's window, probably noticed it more particularly because of the radio report. Oh my god that's it, he said, that's your totem. "My what?" "I always wondered what yours was." "Wait a sec," I said, and pulled out my phone. (I was still looking for any excuse to use it, it was so new.) Twelve seconds later I was an expert on totems and his claim made even less sense. "How do you know what my totem is before I do?" I asked him. He was unable to explain this point. _It's just Jason,_ I thought. _He makes himself such a target with the stupid stuff he says that's almost pointless to take him down._ But he had made me look at the wolf more closely, even without my realizing it. Mr. Goertson had done a good job on him. He had been posed as though he were in a light run, just coming round a tree, three of his feet hovering in the air. I looked at the wolf's face: it had been fixed with a savage intensity barely covered in cold politeness, the kind of face that fixes comprehensively, not on one victim, but on many -- for whom each kill is merely a stopping-point on the way to the next. I noticed that while one of the eyes might almost be said to be looking at me directly, the other was not perfectly in line with it. This apparent error of Mr. Goertson's cut through my perception of the beast like a weird crack from a chance rock on your windshield: to calculated savagery there was added a thin streak of galling stupidity; to ravenous appetite, an unintentional, irrational madness. The other eye might almost be looking at Jason. "You should get it," he breathed. I thought it was a silly idea and told him so, but later on, I admit, I thought better of it. I wasn't going on a vision quest anytime soon, certainly; but supposing the wolf really _were_ my totem, it might be just as effective to commune casually with a dead one in my own den over the course of many years, as it would be to meet a live one for a few heart-pounding seconds in _his_ own den, under the pale moon. Later that day, I called Jason and reminded him he owed me money, and asked if he could pay it back that night or the next day. I didn't tell him I wanted it to buy the wold with, after all. Synopsis -------- Radio address for Feb 21, 2012, which you will have to listen to for yourself. Mention is made of a hunting season in Minnesota for the [wolves coming off the endangered species list][wesl], which is actually true. Music cues are [_Rickover's Dream_][rodr] by Michael Hedges, and [_January Hymn_][jahm] by the Decemberists. [wesl]: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/01/27/dnr-wolf-management/ [rodr]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001382Q1E/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=joelsimprpers-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001382Q1E [jahm]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004HAB07Q/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=joelsimprpers-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004HAB07Q