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Show MOUNTAIN Continued from page 12 down through the cold black earth to the warmer, more insulated layer of humus, creating a bowl-shaped depression some three feet across and ten inches deep. A birthing bed.” To the biologists, nothing is more important than protecting these pups. A debate ensues over whether the mother, number Nine, can raise the pups by herself, feed them and keep them safe from predators. She has no pack, here mate has been shot. “Confusion,” Ferguson explains, “yields to high anxiety.” There is concern Over micro-managing this project — trapping the female, confiscating the eight pups and transporting them back to the acclimation cages. Ferguson gets the impression that the biologists are “going to make this wolf thing work, come hell or high water .. . and eight pups born to million-dollar adults the first season out of the gate is a big part of the recipe for success.” While the biologists discuss the controversy, number Nine takes action. Shortly after the biologists leave the first elk carcass outside of her newly-created birthing den, she seems to conclude that this intrusion renders her den unsafe, as Ferguson writes: “Nine grabs her pups and one-byone carries them for roughly half a mile across a cold, spring-fed freshet, up a steep run of mountain bristling with dark groves of spruce and lodgepole, finally reaching a gnarly sprawl of boulders and lichen-covered talus. To and fro, twisting thorough the black timber eight times that night and back again, one pup at a time clutched firmly in her mouth, none of them ever making so much as a squeak or a whimper.” he biologists have made a decision They will trap Nine, then relocate her and the pups to the pens, where they can be fed, protected and monitored. She is captured in a leghold trap scented with scat from her dead mate an agent from Damage by Animal Control. She gets a new radio collar, has a blood sample taken, is vaccinated for common and graph dog diseases, distemper. Nine’s like “Finally, teats in parvovirus they order to photo document their size during lactation.’ She is sedated and placed in a plastic kennel in a shaded van. The biologists go to retrieve the pups, cursing themselves for not marking the site of the den more clearly Finally, a lucky break hits, they find the big spruce tree that she had chosen for her original den site. “They pull back the lower branches, stare into the dark furrow, look at each other in disbelief. The pups are gone.” “It's hard to imagine a more terrible moment. Wolf number Nine secured in the kennel box, coming out of sedation, the pups out there somewhere in this thick, steep tangle of timber and brush, the clock ticking. If the pups can’t be found, Nine will have to be set free and the entire process started again. And of course, the next time she'll be trap-wise, so much so that she may be impossible to catch at all.” We come, you and I to see the TIMES wolves. We come, as Ferguson tells it, “in our Suburbans and Winnebagos, Jeeps and Fords and Subarus.” We crawl across the Lamar Valley in our vehicles, “where a month ago a fresh layer of grass grew, now in June tires and feet the v egetation and have worn away packed the ground into hard pan.” We come, “clutching our tripods and spot ting scopes, and thermoses of coffee.’ We pull our cars in close, knowing tl more will arrive, that in minutes, th area, this stretch of paved road that skirts the Lamar Valley will be packed with vehicles, bringing regulars, skep tics and newcomers, “maybe trying t figure out how freezing their butts off in the middleof nowhere before the sun is even up could possibly qualify as a vacation Club Wolf,” Ferguson announces, “is in full bloom To be able to sit beside a paved I road in a plastic web lawn chair and watch some of the first wildlife encounters with wolves is without question among the more remarkable gifts to humans in this thoroughly enchanted year. More than any other events these first encounters between wolves their prey, and other predators are what burns into my memory. They're the sights that steal breath, that make the sun stop in the sky. On one level it’s the first spin of a fresh, fascinating wheel of animal behavior; on the other it has the spark of something ancient, of relationships thousands of years old, fanned back to flame before our eyes Ferguson's account fresl of the and first who Ove Witl cne ountry ourage. et then minds about wolves, W Nn know, ni and Ou You man want meeting ibou catch You these nd the can we wolf do i! animal that the that. You catch the snowflake, but whe) you look into your hand you don’t have it no more you see this. But Maybe before you can see it, it is gone. If you want to see it, you have to see it on its own ground. If you catch it, you lose it And where it goes there is no coming back from Not even God can bring it back The wolf is made the way the world is made You cannot touch the world. You cannot hold it in your hand The for it is made of breath only Crossing, Cormac McCarthy. @ Lucy Kaplansky October 19 gpm at Cottonwood H.S. Call 355-5502. ia DAVID (GRISMAN QUINTET October STOP BY OUR ORGANIC TRAL 9-7 MONDAY - FRIDAY 10 - 7 SATURDAY, 12 - 6 SUNDAY PARK CITY'S ONLY ORGANIC GROCERY STORE 1270 IRONHORSE DRIVE + 649-4561 25 8pm « Kingsbury Hall JUICE BAR. CHECK OUT OUR GREAT PRICES ON SOY AND RICE MILKS. DAVID LANZ November 2 MESS 7pm « Abravanel Hall Sinan La (UNTE SOISUICE Selection IN THE CENTER OF SALT LAKE CITY January a 4844 HIGHLAND DRIVE « SALT LAKE CITY 25 13 Hill recording artists Philip Aaburg Turtle Island String Quartet 8pm + Kingsbury Hall Tickets at all ArtTix outlets. CALL COMING SOON FROM THEATER LEAGUE OF UTAH PAGE starring Windham Tuck & Patti \ AVGID THE MEGA STORE old But where is the wolf? OHN GORKA #22 WE'VE GROWN ol nethir some({hning about thi to < ) rical -1VE and said yt land story something these men, must share most I thi humans the m1 u Ferguson's of with comof a local put Fe lets candid year Yellowstone wolves is told passion, humor, the insight 355-ARTS or 355-5502 MUSIC OF THE NIGHT—October |5—20. Call 355-ARTS |
