Once There Were Wolves

by Charlotte McConaghy

This is how the trees speak with and care for each other. Their roots tangle together, dozens of trees with dozens more in a web that reaches on forever, and they whisper to each other through their roots. They warn of danger and they share sustenance. They’re like us, a family. Stronger together. Nothing gets through this life alone.

It is easy to tell myself that what passes between them is only biology, nature, but then who said love does not exist in the nature of all things?

You didn’t touch sweetly unless you were good.

Fear makes for danger, whether it was there to begin with or not.”

“Men get taught to expect control but a modern society no longer supports that, so some men feel it slipping and it humiliates them. The humiliation makes them angry, and then violent.”

I hated them for their politeness, hated that they seemed perfectly nice and yet they were out here doing this heinous thing, hunting for the sake of it, not to survive, not to eat, only to feel power over another creature.

I think he must be a good man. But nobody is only one thing.

What am I doing. I don’t want to socialize so why the hell am I here?

“And when you open your heart to rewilding a landscape, the truth is, you’re opening your heart to rewilding yourself.”

“He was my best friend and I loved him and I’ve been a ghost for years. Of course I’m glad he’s gone.”

No one can meet your trust if you don’t offer it.

He could have become his father but he chose to become his mother instead. We all have that choice, and most of us make it. There is cruelty to survive, to fight against, but there is gentleness more than anything, our roots deep and entangled. That is what we hold inside, what we take with us,