Once There Were Wolves

by Charlotte McConaghy

We are hardwired for empathy.

us. 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.”

The first pair of wolves to mate in Scotland in hundreds of years. 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?

Killing the wolves was a massive blunder on our part. Ecosystems need apex predators because they elicit dynamic ecological changes that ripple down the food chain, and these are known as ‘trophic cascades.’ With their return the landscape will change for the better—more habitats for wildlife will be created, soil health increased, flood waters reduced, carbon emissions captured. Animals of all shapes and sizes will return to these lands.”

He also taught us that compassion was the most important thing we could learn. If someone hurt us, we needed only empathy, and forgiveness would be easy.

“There is no tracking a wolf,” Dad said. “They are cleverer than we are. So instead you track its prey.”

“The infinite mystery of wolves,”

My father used to say the world turned wrong when we started separating ourselves from the wild, when we stopped being one with the rest of nature, and sat apart. He said we might survive this mistake if we found a way to rewild ourselves. But I don’t know how to do that when our existence frightens the creatures we must reconnect with.

I would give anything not to frighten them; it makes me so sad. And yet the truth is that their fear of us keeps them safe from us.

He cares deeply; it is the fabric of his life here. I think he must be a good man. But nobody is only one thing.

“I didn’t know … that that could happen. To a person. That they could just be snuffed out.

That we have the power to undo each other.”

“And when you open your

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

“Animals learn their lessons. They’re smarter than people that way.”

My dog, said his eyes. I turn back for Fingal. I won’t leave him. Not when he fought to save Duncan’s life, when he has died in the trying and isn’t that the way of animals, to break your heart with their courage, with their love.

The wolves melt from the trees. Their eyes reflect the moonlight. I turn and cover my daughter with my body, and I look down at her in this little cocoon. Survive, I urge her. The air catches in my lungs. But she doesn’t attack me, this smallest of the wolves, nearly grown now but still white as the day I held her in my hands. She lies her body next to mine. And as the rest of her pack move to join her, pressing their warmth around us and saving us from the cold, I lower my face into the white of her neck and I weep.

My hope stutters out. I think he will leave me here. An end to his problems. But he lifts me into his arms and says, “It’s all right, sweetheart, you’re safe now,” and I hold on to him as he carries me home, thinking I know nothing about hatred or love, about cruelty or kindness. I know nothing.

Aggie closes her eyes. Terrible pain passes through her. I thought it was happening again. So did I, I sign in return. But, as it turns out, we were the ones who couldn’t be trusted.

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, the way we look after each other.

Life is strange, we do our best.

You have gone the way Dad did, like the animals do. You have gone into the wild to die. Or maybe, you have gone to live.

On a cold night last month, Ash, leader of the Abernethy Pack, lay down to sleep and didn’t wake. Her family lay around her, keeping her warm as she passed away. She was nine years old. The first to build a pack in this new world, the first to bear pups and protect them, alone, against all manner of threat. She guided them through this land and taught them to survive. She never mated again, not after the death of Number Nine. She had only one litter of pups but they have all proven to be strong and brave, and she had a gentler passing than most wolves are afforded. The Abernethy Pack has a new leader now. She is as white as her mother was. She is smaller, and even stronger, if that is possible. I love her with every atom of me and perhaps, in some deeper world than we know, in some place more beautiful than

we can see, she loves me in return. She saved us, once. And it cannot be said that there are no mysteries within a wolf.

Last winter I went out with my tranquilizer darts and I removed every radio collar we’d placed so th...

It is spring now, and the hills have changed color. The deer are on the move. Things are growing again. The wolves have come home. And by some miracle, or perhaps it’s simply the natural way, the people of this land are becoming accustomed to them. With no more incidents since the death of Number Ten, a kind of quiet has fallen over the Highlands, and I suspect, when I see locals using binoculars to pa...

She laughs, as in love with the wilderness as I have ever been. She was born here, is bound deeply. Even if we leave—there are other forests to save, other wolves to return home, the trembling giant has been calling—a part of her will always belong here.

I wrote this novel out of a sense of profound distress over the loss of our natural world. I wanted to imagine an effort to rewild a landscape, such as the ones brave conservationists are attempting throughout the world. To them I say a heartfelt thank-you, for the courage it takes to try to turn back the tide.

I’d like to specifically thank the extraordinary team at Yellowstone National Park. After seventy years without wolves, in 1995 they achieved the almost impossible feat of reintroducing these essential predators to an environment in crisis, and have breathed new life into the land. I took a great deal of inspiration from these women and men, but also from the wolves themselves, and their incredible stories.

Lastly, I must again acknowledge the wild creatures and places in this world, which inspired every word of this novel. The gentle they have shown us far outstrips anything we have ever shown them in return. Though Scotland has not yet passed an initiative to reintroduce wolves, it’s my hope that they—along with the rest of the world, and especially my homeland of Australia—will further embrace the essential work of rewilding, and maybe in doing so, we will begin to rewild ourselves.