Douglas W. Smith - Decade of the Wolf: Returning the Wild to Yellowstone

Previous books by Douglas W. Smith

The Wolves of Yellowstone, co-authored with Mike Phillips

Previous books by Gary Ferguson

The Great Divide: The Rocky Mountains in the American Mind

Hawks Rest: A Season in the Remote Heart of Yellowstone

Shouting at the Sky: Troubled Teens and the Promise of the Wild

www.wildwords.net

2005, 2012 Douglas Smith and Gary Ferguson

First Lyons Press paperback edition, 2006, 2012

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to Globe Pequot Press, Attn: Rights and Permissions Department, P.O. Box 480, Guilford, CT 06437.

Lyons Press is an imprint of Globe Pequot Press.

Project editor: David Legere

Text design: Diane Gleba Hall

Layout artist: Justin Marciano

Original book design and composition by Diane Gleba Hall

Photographs courtesy of:

Title page: Doug Dance.

Chapter openers: Pages 3, 83, 91: Bob Landis; pp 25, 41, 65, 101, 105, 143: National Park Service/Jim Peaco; pp 21, 51, 69, 117, 147, 183, 211: National Park Service/Douglas Smith; p 125: Bill Campbell; p 189: Mark Miller.

Insert: Pages 13, 2829: Mark Miller; pp 4 (top), 5 (bottom): National Park Service/Jim Peaco; p 4 (bottom): Jeanne Ross; pp 1819, 21 (top), 2223, 25 (top): Doug Dance; p 8: Bill Campbell; pp 9 (top), 20 (top), 20 and 21 (bottom), 25 (bottom), 26 and 27 (bottom): Bob Landis; pp 9 (bottom), 24: National Park Service/Dan Stahler; pp 67, 8 (top), 1011, 13 (bottom), 1417, 20 (top), 24 (top), 25 (top), 27, 3031, 32 (top): National Park Service/Douglas Smith; pp 1213: Dale and Elva Paulson; p 26 (top) Monty Sloan; p 32 (Clockwise from top): National Park Service; Turner Endangered Species Fund; Bill Campbell; National Park Service/Douglas Smith; National Park Service, National Park Service; National Park Service/Douglas Smith; National Park Service/Douglas Smith.

The Library of Congress has previously cataloged an earlier (hardcover) edition as follows:

Smith, Douglas W.

Decade of the wolf : returning the wild to Yellowstone / Douglas Smith & Gary Ferguso

p. cm.

ISBN 159228-700-x (tradecloth)

1. WolvesReintroductionYellowstone National Park. 1. Ferguson, Gary, 1956- 11. Title.

QL 737.C22S63 2005

599.773'09787'52dc22

2005040767

CIP

ISBN 9780-7627-7905-5

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

for Christine

To mention all of the people involved in the first sixteen years of the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction would by itself fill a small book. Our thanks and admiration go out to them all. In writing Decade of the Wolf, were especially indebted to those who lent critical comments to the original manuscript, including Ed Bangs, Rick McIntyre, Rolf Peterson, Jane Ferguson, Judy McHale, our agent Joe Regal, and of course our editors at The Lyons Press, Ann Treistman and Holly Rubino. John Varley and Dave Mech were also enormously helpful. Debra Guernsey and Daniel Stahler of the Wolf Project offered not only valuable insights but also helped with fact checking and data compilation. We greatly appreciate each of several outstanding photographers, including Bob Landis, Doug Dance, Mark Miller, Bill Campbell, Monty Sloan, and Dale and Elva Paulson, whose careful eye and generous spirit have become such an important part of this work. (Thanks too to many fine amateurs who shared images with uswe regret having simply run out of room!) Finally, coauthor Doug Smiths wife, Christine, deserves heartfelt gratitude for many reasons, not the least of which is the sacrifice of family time she made for the sake of this project. Heres hoping, Christine, that our lives can now return to normal.

Over the past decade or so, Doug and I have been especially lucky, having gathered some unforgettable wild memories with one another, many of them while sitting in the bow or stern seat of a canoe. In 2000 we floated down the remote Hood River, just inside the Arctic Circle, in Canadas Nunavut Territory. Several years after that, we paddled together on a trek with legendary Canadian outfitter and explorer Alex Hall, dropping down a shelf of remote lakes near the headwaters of the Thelon River, in Canadas Northwest Territories. We embarked on this latter trip two years after my wife, Jane, was killed in a canoeing accident north of Thunder Bay, Ontario. Against that background the sprawling Thelon country seemed especially precious, a source of great comfort in the wake of great loss. Each night, after setting up the tent, Doug and I would part from the rest of the group for an hour or so, measure out our allotted drams of Scotch, fire up a pair of cigars on some sand esker, and begin to talk.

We spoke of being with Jane on the Hood River: how she bounced across the tundra every morning passing out cups of strong coffee, how we were able to pluck lake trout from the river for dinner without even trying. How at the end of the journey we stripped down to our underwear and plunged into the Arctic Sound. We smiled over the memory of stopping on a sandbar at noon to stretch our legs, and suddenly spotting a pair of wolves just across the rivera white male and black femaleplaying with their pups so enthusiastically they sent thick clouds of dust drifting through the air. How when the adults finally looked up and spotted us they immediately sprung into action, squirreling their young away in the den. When we pushed off and began floating downstream again, the male trotted alongside us on a small ridge, howling, clearly anxious for us to be away.

We sat there with those cigars and those splashes of Scotch and considered the miracle of hundreds of thousands of caribou moving south every summer, following the greening tundra. We thought of grizzlies vacuuming raspberries and cloudberries from among the dwarf birch, then swaggering down to the shallows of the river to sniff for trout. Doug told me of other trips, how in the dim wash of midnight the northern lights had come pulsing and spinning and reeling, as if they might reach out and lick the tundra. In the end, though, mostly we talked about being grateful that such wild places, such fully functioning ecosystemsat least a few of themare still to be found. Lands where nature flows in currents so big youve got no choice but to go along, moving in every minute of every day with careful, rapt attention, offering always the respect that the last stark places on Earth require.

The year after Doug and I returned from the Northwest Territories, in early autumn, the two of us, along with his wife, Christine, and their two little boys, pushed off from Pumice Point on the western shore of Yellowstone Lake and headed south, paddling for Peale Island. Named in 1878 for geologist A.C. Peale, the island sits in the middle of one of the wildest remaining corners of Yellowstone. A place of big quiet. Of pelicans and osprey and bald eagles, and over on the southern shores, located a half mile away, a brilliant parade of elk and grizzlies and wolves. To the east rises the staggering highline of the Absaroka Range, while far to the west are the lonely forests of the Pitchstone Plateau. To the south begins the loose swagger of the Thorofare, big meadows cradling the Yellowstone River all the way out of the national park and into the canyons of the Bridger-Teton Wilderness.