The Geiger Counter

Wolf in the story

Medieval people believed a wolf could steal your voice if it saw you before you saw it. Because of this, if you were with friends and stopped speaking, someone would often exclaim,  “Lupus est in fabula!” which means “Wolf in the story!”*

I am unlikely to bump into many gray wolves where I live. Most of Wisconsin’s more than 1,000 large wolves live to the north of me. But I do see their wily cousin, the prairie or brush wolf, AKA the coyote, all the time. As a hunter and hiker, I spend as much time as I can in the woods, and, more often than not, as I sit quietly and observe, I see these ruddy canines loping, leaping and looking for something to eat. They trot by, through cornfields and under trees, fat and furry. They are yellow-eyed and sometimes they appear and then vanish without abiding by any rules of physics. 

Once, when hunting deer in deep snow, I sat on the edge of a precipice, overlooking a valley, and watched silently. Below me, I saw a large coyote trot along the side of a stream, marking as he went. It felt powerful to see him without him seeing me. 

Then, all of a sudden, the hair stood up on the back of my neck. This is called piloerection (haha) and it is the same thing dogs do when they get scared or angry, making them look bigger to a potential threat. I was seated in a drift of snow, so that only the top third of my body was showing. I twisted my neck and saw a second coyote stalking me from behind. It took my breath – and my voice – away. I stood up, and the animals jumped in the air, shocked at the way I had grown, and loped away through deep snow and heavy brush, as if it were nothing. 

It did feel as if it had taken my voice for a moment, and I was left to think and feel with a much older, more primitive part of my brain, which has existed since long before the creation of words.  I once read that human beings probably existed for hundreds of thousands of years before they invented language. For much of our history, we didn’t talk to one another. In fact, we didn’t even think in words, but rather in unconscious ideas. Then, one day or night, someone, somewhere on this vast planet realized that a thing could be another thing (only, they realized it without using words, of course) and something magical – language - was born. A certain mark or sound could represent something else. The whispered word “mammoth” can also be a 6,000 pound beast. A sound as short as “god” or “food” or “child” can be something of unfathomable value. A small noise, heard in your head and uttered by your lips, can be the name of your unborn baby, or your long-deceased grandmother. It can be your future self, or someone you used to be and will never be again. A word can be a person, and a person can be a word. Things can be other things. Of course they can. 

I wonder if we got this idea from the coyote, which famously shapeshifts, appearing and disappearing in so many forms. Sometimes they look and act like wolves, and YouTube abounds with videos of them taking on massive prey, including powerful bucks. Sometimes they are more like foxes, stealing from the farmer’s chicken coop. And sometimes they seem perfectly at home in suburban and even urban areas, where they thrive on trash and the occasional cat or chihuahua. In rare cases, they even attack humans. There have been verified accounts of attacks on small children, and an adult folk singer in Canada was killed by a coyote (or, several coyotes) a few years ago. But in the vast majority of cases, they live right alongside people without the humans even realizing it. They can live out their lives dining on mice and blueberries, or half-eaten Whoppers, deer and fish, or pizza crusts, or just about anything else. While more powerful animals always seem to go extinct, these shapeshifters thrive, in spite of, and sometimes even because of their persecution. 

We are told from an early age that power is the most important thing. That we must be strong, and – more importantly - we must pursue strength at any cost. Those who are powerful must be constantly envied, and, as a logical extension of that, attacked. 

But when I look around me, I do not see the powerful gray wolf padding through the woods. For all its power, it is nearly gone. Because there will always be something more powerful, and more violent, and more thirsty for power, and in this case it was human beings, who would do well to learn from the great wolf’s lesson.

Last night, I sat on the edge of a fallow field, hidden in a clump of tall grass, waiting for game. A little before sunset, a dark coyote materialized at the edge of the forest, making his way across the field, looking for mice. He was big, and strong, his coat flecked with black, and he was – as always – looking for meat. 

I saw him, but he did not see me. 

An hour later, as I stood up to leave, a different coyote, this one smaller, and quicker, and redder, was standing just a few feet to my right. For just a moment we stood and stared at each other. It took my breath – and maybe my ability to speak – away. And then it vanished. 

As I walked away, I remembered that things can be other things. And I knew that was the key to the coyote’s success. A prairie wolf can be a brush wolf, which can be a coyote, which can be anything it needs to be. Because there is always something bigger, and meaner, and more powerful, so – and I realize I am in the minority – I suspect power is not the answer to happiness or even survival. Powerful people always seem to die in disgrace, in some crumbling bunker or cell. Perhaps the trick, and who better to learn a trick from than an ancient trickster,  the coyote, is to know that you can be anything, big and small, powerful and weak, petty and altruistic. People, with their relatively recent gift of language, so often talk about changing the world, which is something gray wolves certainly do, as is shown by their absence and its impact on the landscape. But the humble coyote, which can be anything, will never be gone. Because for all the bounties people put on its head, for all the roads and subdivisions they build, for all the poison they lay out and bullets they fire, there are actually more coyotes today than when the first Europeans arrived in North America. You can’t say that about the mighty bison, or the powerful wolf, or the leviathan mastodon. Coyotes do not always try to dominate, or make the earth submit to their wills. They do not change the world. They are too crafty, and too wise, and instead they change themselves, sometimes in an instant. They remember something someone realized long ago: that things can be other things. And I have a feeling, for as long as there are people, with the strange sounds we make, there will always be coyotes in our story.  

*This information comes from the delightful History and Folklore Podcast. I contacted the erudite and generous host, Holly, who directed me to her primary source, Bartholomeus Anglicus ‘De proprietatibus rerum’ in which he writes: “Churls speak of him [the wolf] and say that a man loseth his voice, if the wolf seeth him first. Therefore to a man that is suddenly still, and leaveth to speak it is said, “Lupus est in fabula” “The wolf is in the tale.” And certainly if he know that he is seen first, he loseth his boldness, hardihood, and fierceness.” Visit https://historyandfolklorepodcast.libsyn.com/ for more great folklore. 

Should this article be featured?: 
Yes

Mount Horeb Mail

114 East Main Street
Mount Horeb, WI
http://mounthorebmail.com/

Subscribe to our RSS Feed

Comment Here