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2. First Meetings
- Oregon State University Press
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17 First Meetings Morgan is driving in low gear. Half his body is hanging out the truck’s open window, and his eyes are fixed on the small weedy ditch that runs alongside what at one time might have been a logging road. It has been sprinkling on and off, and while the road is dry the ditch is still muddy. Small pools of standing water dusted with yellow pollen attract puddling butterflies slurping valuable minerals out of the algal-tinged slurry. Morgan leans a little farther out the window, then without hitting the brakes he reaches over and shifts the truck into park. Morgan’s out of the truck before we’re at a full stop, and I’m left staring out the open driver’s door. I can just see the top of his head as he crouches in the ditch. I push my own door open, scrambling out and around the front of the truck to sink down next to Morgan. Clearly embedded in the soft mud is a paw print. Two feet away is another. Reaching out toward the first print I spread my pinkie and thumb in the classic surfing“hang loose”sign. With my fingers I span the print from the toes to the back of the pad, and then again just below the small toe indentations. The whole print is roughly four inches long by about three inches wide. “That’s a front foot,” says Morgan, nodding at the print. He scans the ditch.“There’s a hind print, and see over here there’s a track going the other direction.This is a wolf highway.”I stare at the ground, suddenly seeing prints everywhere. They look like dog prints but bigger, as if 18 First Meetings Fido had hit a growth spurt in the middle of the night.1 There in the ditch with my butt inches from the mud, it hits me. There are wolves in Oregon. There exist two types of understanding: logical and emotional. Logically I had known wolves were in the state for years. They were regularly in the headlines of the biggest newspapers, and I’d been talking regularly with biologists and wildlife managers about their presence. Yet emotionally I didn’t understand their presence until the physical proof of their existence was directly in front of me. The tracks were irrefutable. We get back in the truck and continue up the road, stopping often to look at more tracks and to scoop large piles of reeking black wolf shit into the Ziplocs. We fold the bags over our hands, just like the signs at the dog park illustrate, and hold our breath as we gather the samples. It takes me only one pile to realize why the gallon size is necessary. Eventually we reach a point where the tracks seem to leave the road. Morgan pulls out the bunny-ear antennae and listens for the beeps that signal the alpha wolf’s presence. We hear a few muted beeps, but they’re headed away from our intended direction and us. Morgan stashes the antenna in the truck and tells me if I need to pee I should do it here near the road. We shoulder our packs and walk into the undergrowth. It is just after noon. The sky is bright blue. Birds are chirping. I want to ask Morgan if he has a gun and if I should be afraid, but I don’t. Instead I keep him in sight and try not to step on every stick in the forest. We hike for fifteen minutes ducking under low branches and skirting around large fallen logs, their trunks rotten and crumbling. We cross a small creek and Morgan points out the game trails branching away from the small pools like spokes on a wagon wheel.We each follow a distinct trail but when I spot a clump of fur stuck in the thorns I stage whisper his name and wave the downy clump in the air for him to see. A minute later Morgan gestures for me to join him in the shadows at the edge of a small clearing. I breathe quietly through my mouth as I approach. Thirty yards away a pile of abandoned logs is in full sunlight. At one point probably fifty years earlier, loggers had come through the area felling trees and hauling them out to the road for transport [3.90.33.254] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 23...