Philippa Forrester - On the Trail of Wolves: A British Adventure in the Wild West

To my Mum who taught me to be bigger and braver but to always try to understand rather than judge.

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To all women who are trying to fit themselves and their work around loving everyone else.

Contents

No one will deny that writing a book is hard, and although I got the words onto the page, this book took a team, and I wouldnt have it any other way.

Usually, a book comes from a burning desire to say something, but it wasnt really my voice that was important to me, it was the voices of the people I discovered when I moved to the US. I realised that our lives, our politics, even our social media pages are so much about what we have to say that we have forgotten how to really listen to what others have to say how to listen to understand. In this case, to understand why so many perceive the same incredible wolf in different ways. Passions run high when it comes to wolves everyone has something to say, but it isnt always something good.

So my debt of thanks goes first to the people who took a risk and understood that I wanted to listen to understand, rather than to judge.

Verne, the ex-trophy hunter who showed me so much kindness and other hunters who spoke with me at length including Ed Bangs and Ron Hoag, Malou and her family who hosted me and talked so openly. The wolf watchers of Yellowstone who always share, especially Wolf Man Cliff, Jan of Beds and Buns in Cooke City, Lisa Robertson, Steve Cain and Kira Cassidy who were beyond generous with their time and knowledge. Ken Mills and Game and Fish for allowing me an insight into the challenges they face to keep our wolf population in Wyoming. Jon and Deb at Diamond G ranch for sharing the details of a life ranching with predators.

Julie Bailey at Bloomsbury thank you for being so excited and supportive of this idea you have been a joy to work with.

The huge team at Bloomsbury who have been behind me all the way.

Sophie and Derek Craighead and Noa and Ted Staryk for their ongoing support.

Ronan Donovan who shared his photo for our cover with such excitement.

Then there were the people who gave me faith in myself when I had none left.

Julie Elledge, and especially my agent Gill McLay without whom I would not have had the courage to keep putting pen to paper and believe in what I was writing. Tina Price my PR without whose constant love and support I would still be stuck under a TV in Ealing.

My family Fred, Gus and Arthur, you have watched me fail and fall and try for so long such is the writers way, and every time I get back up, it is because of you. I hope I have made you proud.

Charlie I did it.

Although not perfectly to scale, this map gives you a gist of the lie of the land. Dashed lines are state lines, while the solid line indicates the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park.

I hear the wolves while Im working alone in our snow-clad log cabin in the wilds of Wyoming. I have never heard wild wolves before, but I am in no doubt about who it is calling outside in the snowy valley. I stand on the deck and wrap my cardigan around me, shivering, both with cold and excitement.

It is surprisingly easy to track their progress not just from the howling. The still air is full of them, alive, as if they have a static presence. Theyre travelling towards me, along the river that runs just a few hundred yards from our house.

I hear dogs too, in a cabin further downriver. They are apoplectic. I wonder if they could be the golden retrievers I saw the other day. I havent seen any sign of Dave, who apparently lives in that cabin, so I havent been able to ask him about them. Anyway, their best guard dog barks seem a bit pointless spiky rather than intimidating, and, I would imagine, rather irritating to a wolf.

A group of three Canada geese fly up from the river, honking in tuneless alarm as they try to arrange themselves into the correct flying formation. Are the wolves right there?

Two paddocks away, in the branches of a grey-green aspen tree, crows and magpies gather together in a large group. They caw loudly and peer in the direction of the river. I have never seen them gather together like that. But I have heard that they will follow a wolf pack in the vague hope of snatching a piece of meat from a kill. Does that mean the wolves are hunting? Oh, why cant I see what they can see from the top of that tree?

The wolves howl again, closer now. A moment later comes a reply from way over the forested hill. A single howl. A lonesome wolf?

The call is so low in pitch that somehow it fills my heart, swilling around inside, like thick red wine in an over-large glass. Humans can only howl like that when it comes from deep inside our hearts. I know, I have done it only once, with our dog. Funny, yet it was desperately sad at the same time my heart was broken.

I rush upstairs to press my binoculars against the window Nothing. Racing back down the slippery wooden steps to the ground-level windows, I peer between our neighbours house and the trees Still nothing. Upstairs again, two at a time, to squint at the hills rising from the river. I still cant see any wolves, but I can hear they are really close. So I return to the deck and just listen. After all, that is where the magic is.

Perhaps today I dont need to see them. Instead, I can imagine what the wolves are doing: they are travelling away from me now, a pack running swiftly together through the valley towards the forested hill where the lone wolf calls. They are organising each other, making a plan, planning to meet.

After a while, the sounds become fainter. Perhaps I should return inside, carry on writing. After all, you never catch a bunch of wolves sitting around in the woods procrastinating they might howl a bit, but ultimately they just get on with what they need to get on with. I wonder what that is?

When I return to stand outside ten minutes later, the wolves are gone. I know it not just because their sounds are gone but because I can feel it in the air. Every other creature is quiet, and the air is clear the wolves static gone. But those calls linger in my head.

Whether they are meant this way or not, these calls are a call to me a wake-up call, adding fuel to a smouldering fire inside me. They make me realise where my passion lies, where my curiosity ignites: with the wolves in the wilderness.

We have brought our family on their biggest adventure, from the Austenesque world of Bath in England to the Wild West. We are on assignment for National Geographic magazine, for a special one-off edition about Yellowstone National Park. Always ready for excitement, we packed up our three kids, ten bags (much of which was Lego), and a truck-load of camera kit, said goodbye to family, friends and pets (prompting many tears), and headed out into the wilds of Wyoming for a year. We are, for now, living in a log cabin where the nearest pint of milk for sale is an hour and twenty-five minutes away. The kids are in a school with only thirteen other children, and life is pretty much unrecognisable apart from the laundry and the dishes, which are sadly persistent wherever we go.

We are here to find and photograph wildlife, and we are all agreed that this is one of the most exciting things we have ever done.