Wolf Tongue

Despite it being late May, Mission: Wolf greeted our school group with a snowstorm. The
fourteen of us huddled together in a small circle of logs, snowflakes drifting around us. Javier
and Ms. Justine, our supervisors, were standing around and taking pictures, accustomed to the
cold from their wealth of experience hiking in high altitudes.
I looked at my friends shivering in their light jackets and hats. No one had expected the
snow. Still, we were all looking forward to the next few days— a school-organized trip to a wolf
sanctuary in the Colorado mountains!
A purple blob began moving towards us from the mountain depths. It was a woman
bundled in heavy winter clothes. When she reached us, she put her hands on her hips and gave us
all a wide smile.
“What’s up, everyone? Hope you all had a nice trip!”
No one answered. We were exhausted, after all, we had just gotten off a five-hour car
ride, and since we had two seven-seat vans and a group of fourteen, everyone had been crammed
shoulder to shoulder.
The woman scratched her chin. “Well, I see y’all aren’t very talkative. But that’s alright,
since you won’t be doing much talking here anyway. My name’s Maddie, and I’ll be your camp
mentor for the next couple days.”
After rattling off introductions and warnings, Maddie herded us to set up camp. Visitors
like us would usually set up tents under the stars and in the freezing cold, but tonight, in
expectation of two inches of snow, she directed us to an unfinished building to spend the night
instead.

***

The next morning, Maddie rounded us up and gave us a small tour. Mission: Wolf was
stationed on a mountain and there were three main parts of the campus: the main cabin where all
the long-term staff lived, the unfinished rehabilitation building for new wolves where we were
temporarily staying, and the wolf enclosures.
Mission: Wolf had twenty enclosures, roughly two acres large and shared between either
one or two wolves depending on their social needs. The less social wolves were kept in the
higher enclosures and had less interaction with visitors, while further down the mountain, the
more dog-like and amiable wolves acted like mascots.
The sanctuary’s biggest mascot, though, was human.
Kent Weber strolled over the next morning just as Maddie finished settling us down
around a small campfire next to the wolf enclosures. He held a metal coffee cup in his hands and
was humming an unidentifiable country melody.
“Hey fellas,” he said, nodding at us. Straw hat, checkered blue shirt, brown overalls,
black rubber boots— Kent sounded exactly the way I expected.

A couple of us murmured hellos and good mornings back while the rest stared at him
with curiosity. Despite the lackluster reception, Kent grinned and asked, “How would you guys
like to kiss a wolf?”

***

Kent wasn’t kidding— But I think it was only when we were firmly seated on the log
benches in the middle of a wolf enclosure with two wolves prowling on the other side of a fence
just meters away that reality hit for everyone.
Oh crap, the mood screamed, we’re gonna kiss a wolf.
“Remember what I told you guys! Use peripheral vision to ‘look’ at them! Act casual!
Make sure not to panic when they greet you— they’re just excited! Remember! Pressure! Then
release! Let them come to you! Not the other way around!” Kent repeated over and over as he
circled around us. The whole time he kept his voice level and steady, careful not to spook the
wolves.
Everyone settled down, and Kent crossed over to the fence gate. He opened it, letting the
two she-wolves in. At first, they eyed us warily, running up and down and around the line while
keeping a good distance, as if surveying each individual. Then, satisfied by this “offering,” they
approached and greeted each of us, teeth clashing against teeth, wolf slobber covering human
faces.
They regrouped under the tree, flicked their tails, and trotted back into the inner
enclosure. It was noon, and the warm sunshine made perfect weather for a midday nap.
My friend, Leila rubbed her two front teeth, looking like a beaver. She tilted her head at
me and pointed to herself. “Did I just get my first kiss from a wolf?”
I froze. The two of us stared at each other, speechless. I think I just did too.

***

Leila and the rest decided to meet other wolves. I was tired, so I didn’t join them and
went back to eat lunch earlier instead. I found a good place to sit next, right next to Obsidian, a
new wolf-dog that just arrived at Mission: Wolf. His temporary enclosure had a small bench
outside of it that was comfortable and had a perfect, scenic view.
Obsidian was a large, black wolf-dog with a white snout. He used to be a pet, but since he
was getting out of control in the suburbs, his previous owners brought him over to Mission: Wolf
in January and left him there. According to Kent, that was the first time he ever saw a wolf
completely shut down. Obsidian refused to eat, interact, or acknowledge anyone for the first
couple weeks. He got better, eventually, but eyeing him from the crack in the fence, it was clear
that the scars of abandonment had yet to fade.
As I sat down, I felt Obsidian rise, shaking himself out. From the corner of my eye, I saw
him turning his head toward me, tail swaying low. Obsidian began to pace, round and round his

tiny enclosure. Then, he began pacing over to me, sticking his nose through the little holes of the
chain link fence and sniffing in my direction. I turned my head towards him. He tensed up, then
paced off. I turned my head back to my lunch. Obsidian paused to sniff me again. I turned my
head back towards him. He paced away again.
I think we went through this loop eight or nine times before I gave up and I looked down
at my sandwich, focusing on the turkey, the bread, the lettuce frills, the slice of off-white colored
cheese. That was also the cycle when Obsidian stopped pacing.
He sniffed up to me as usual, but instead of running away, he lay down next to me,
resting his head on his feet. I didn’t dare look at him again, in hopes of preserving the moment.
The two of us just sat there, gazing out at the Colorado peaks glowing faintly with fresh snow.

***

A long time ago, an old man brought his teenage granddaughter to Mission: Wolf. They
spent a week feeding the wolves, hiking through the mountains, and hacking logs into wooden
planks. The girl disliked interacting with strangers, and Kent rarely heard her speak more than
three words at once. She did like the wolves a lot though, and he could tell she was very sorry to
go. A week later, Kent got a call from the girl’s mother, asking him what the hell happened.
“She’s talking to us!”
“I’m sorry?”
“She never talked to us! She never talked to other kids! And—” Kent could hear the
mother choking over her own voice. “Are you a miracle worker?”
Kent was silent for a bit. The phone call had come in the middle of his breakfast, and he
had been eating on the main cabin’s patio. Magpies were squabbling nearby over a piece of stale
bread. In the distance, he saw two wolves, Flash and Cephira, lounging in their enclosure.
He considered, then replied, “No miracles. Just good ol’ nature.”

***

The next day was feeding day for the wolves. To imitate a wolf’s natural eating habits,
which was usually once every few days, the wolves at Mission: Wolf were fed only on Saturday
and Wednesday, feasting on meals . As such, the morning atmosphere was festive with the howls
and barks of starving wolves. Maddie pulled up in the silver pick up truck, a large tarp covering
the trunk of the car. She hopped out of the truck and three other volunteers swarmed over to help
her unload.
The meat was already diced up in large chunks. I glimpsed a gloved hand pulling a full
ribcage— meat and sinew and all— out around the car and onto their special butchering set up
on the ground.
I squinted at the rib and made a wild guess. “Cow?”

“Nope.” Maddie overheard me and explained, “It’s a horse. An old, dead horse sent in by
a rancher a couple towns away.”
The summer staff took out a few chunks to start with and began hacking them down into
pieces the size of my foot. It was fascinating. And gruesome— but more fascinating, watching
them cut at the hides, chop at the flesh, and tear at the ligaments. Soon enough, the dirt ground
beneath them became muddied with horse blood, but that didn’t seem to stop any of them from
kneeling or sitting on the ground to get the job down. Each and every one of them was an
embodiment of the phrase “getting your hands dirty.”
The pool of blood grew beyond the area of operation and began to flow towards a small
crevice in the ground, forming a stream of blood that trickled downhill and into the grasses at the
bottom of the hill. I noticed that the grass seemed particularly greener and taller than the rest, and
I couldn’t help but gag.
Maddie shooed us away afterward. It was going to take a long, long time to finish cutting
up the horse. At least several hours. Might as well do something else in the meantime.

***
That “something else” turned out to be manual labor.
Kent brought us out two miles into fields and hills of wild grass and cow dung. We
weren’t actually “building” a fence. The wooden fence posts had been dug in and set years ago,
but the sanctuary staff just hadn’t found the time to attach the barbed wires.
Work was slow at first. The boys in our group had a bunch of trouble with the pliers, and
two of the summer staff, Arie and Trevor, spent over an hour showing them the ropes. But by
mid-afternoon everyone was averaging a fence post every two minutes, and we had fenced half a
mile along the road already. We would’ve gone faster if the land wasn’t absolutely littered with
cow excrement. Since Colorado is an open range state, cattle are allowed to roam anywhere,
regardless of land ownership. As such, their large, pie-shaped dung was omnipresent. The older
ones would be dried and gray-colored with tints of green, while the fresher ones were darker
green. It was like picking our way through a minefield. Every square meter we’d come across
another mound, so we spent all our time with our eyes on the ground instead of looking up at the
sky or the beautiful fields around us.
I don’t remember when they told us to stop, nor how sore my muscles had been. The sun
was still beating down on us from high above. Our ragged, worn out group trudged back up the
hill, stumbling and hanging onto each other as if we were all in a fever dream.
At the top, we turned around. The road and fence behind us stretched so far and so down,
we couldn’t even see the place where we finished. I looked down at my red and grimy hands.
Did we just build all this?

***

Once, a guy brought in a beautiful horse that he didn’t want anymore. It wasn’t even a
horse, actually. It was a pony, just a little under five feet. Kent asked the guy why he didn’t want
her, and the guy said, “The damn thing can’t walk!”
“Why? What happened?” Kent asked, and the guy replied that he’d ridden endurance
races on her for the last five years. Endurance is a kind of super marathon for horses, about a
hundred miles and taking place over three days. Now this guy was three hundred pounds, and he
had ridden a five foot tall pony on endurance for five years. Her ligaments were so torn she could
barely lift her hooves off the ground.
Yet, as he was trying to leave, the pony kept trying to follow him. The guy kept shoving
her back towards Kent, rambling, “Just feed it to the wolves or something. Gosh, I can’t wait to
get myself a new one.” He kept saying it until he got in his gray Jeep and drove away.

***

We gathered around the little campfire site, huddled with mugs of hot chocolate that
Maddie had brewed for us. The wolves in the enclosures next to us— Fenris and Nashira, two
mates— were restless, tossing their heads, swinging their tails, and prowling up and down the
fence. Obsidian kept leaping onto the steeply slanted roof of the shed building from his enclosure
and raced up and down the slate tiles. It was a curious sight. His previous lethargic and closed off
personality seemed to flip completely with the promise of food.
Kent didn’t keep them waiting long.
He came in hauling a giant white bag, stained with little red splotches. He approached the
fence gate, looked over at us and said, “Watch closely.”
The world seemed to hold its breath. With one gloved hand inside the bag and the other
gripping the bag tightly, Kent went inside with the wolves. They pounced with the full ferocity of
wild animals just as Kent threw out a large rib with strings of red meat trailing the air behind it.
The wolves twisted their bodies midair and snapped at bone with their jaws. Nashira got to it
first, and leapt away to chew at it. Fenris circled back in a blink and caught another hunk of meat
that Kent threw out. Dumping another thirty pounds worth around the area, Kent quickly hopped
out of the enclosure as the wolves tore into their meals.
He secured the latch on the fence goat, then turned to look at us, chuckling. “So, cool
huh?” he teased, and disappeared down the path leading to the enclosures farther in to feed the
rest.
I looked back at the wolves. Nashira had broken the rib into several fragmented pieces
and was practically inhaling everything— bone shards wrapped in horse hair and all. Fenris was
tearing at his hunk of meat with his canines. There was something exotically savage yet familiar
in the way they ate. The two wolves finished every last bit until they were so full their legs could
no longer support their weight and they collapsed into the earth, falling into a deep sleep.

***

“Everyone, I want to hear you shout the answer: Life is—” Kent raised his arms up and
cocked his head to the side, waiting for our answer.
We looked at each other and shrugged. No one replied. We were sitting in the wolf
enclosures again. But this time, it wasn’t to kiss a wolf. Kent was teaching us how to make wolf
fur bracelets. A memento, since it was our last day here.
Upon hearing no answer, Kent shook his head. “Oh, come on!”
He was standing on top of a small boulder, facing our group, lined up and sitting on the
log rows like obedient children. Flash and Cephira, the two wolves, circled the boulder curiously,
embracing an ear scratch from Kent now and then. He gave a huff and said, “The answer is: just
physics! Repeat after me: Life is just physics!”
He hopped off the boulder, reached a hand down to pet Cephira, and grabbed a handful of
soft gray fluff.
“Alright everyone, look here. This is how the physics of making a bracelet work.” Kent
held up the clump of wolf wool and began to stretch it. Then he twisted it, keeping a tight grip on
the ends, until it became a long, clumpy, five-inch-long rope. He shifted his hand down towards
the tip of the rope and pinched it, slowly drawing out the fur with his right hand in a more
precise manner, all the while twisting nonstop with his left. Soon, he had a meter-long piece of
compact twine stretching from end to end.
“So now you have this… thing. It’s got torsion, tension. What happens if you release one
end?” Kent let go of the right and the string snapped together like magnets, folding at the center
and twisting around the other half until Kent held a loose braid in his left hand. Quickly, he
knotted the loose ends together into a circular loop. A bracelet.
“And there you go,” he said, smirking at our astonished and eager faces, “Making a wolf
fur bracelet 101!”

***

The others needed to use the restroom one last time before we left Mission: Wolf for our
five hour drive back to Albuquerque, so I waited on the main cabin’s uppermost balcony for
them.
In the porch below, Arie and Trevor lounged on cushioned chairs while playing the guitar
and the drum respectively. Their music drifted far beyond the borders of Mission: Wolf, gliding
over the Colorado hills, fresh and budding with new grass, climbing up, beyond, and over the
highest mountain peaks, and flying off somewhere unknown, unexplored.
I closed my eyes and joined the music. Then, I was the one flying. I was the one
dominating the clear skies and lush pastures. When I opened my eyes, the world around me had
changed. It was a subtle change, as if a dimension of reality had revealed itself to me, but I
couldn’t quite pinpoint was was familiar and what was new.

Even hours later, as I sat in a crammed van, fingering my newly crafted wolf bracelet, I
could still hear the melody of Arie’s guitar soaring through the wind.