Once There Were Wolves

by Charlotte McConaghy

There are languages without words and violence is one of them.

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.

The children in us long for monsters to take forms we understand. They want to fear the wolves because they don’t want to fear each other.

I began to wonder if what we were doing was right. If our involvement in their lives was too much. We were trying to save them but we killed them sometimes, too. We stomped through the world and crumpled things where we walked, too human, not creature enough.

“But now, change is frightening to some,” she concedes after a little while. “And when you open your heart to rewilding a landscape, the truth is, you’re opening your heart to rewilding yourself.”

I thought her fear was madness but there is nothing insane about learning from your experiences. Her vigilance might be the sanest thing in our lives.