Medicine of the Wolf Page #8

I've probably known 30, or 40 wolves

like friends, over the years,

and I'm afraid to do that now.

It's been a couple years now

and it's not getting any better.

No.

I came back to Minnesota

for one last interview with Jim

before I was to wrap up the film.

But with another wolf hunt

on the horizon,

it was a bit of a somber reunion.

But just as we were about to pack up,

Jim, with his unique ability

for resilience,

said he had something

he wanted to show us.

Something he had just found

that he hadn't

shared with anyone before.

And I wondered in that moment

if Jim, too, was looking for some hope.

I can't explain it,

it happens to me a lot.

I don't know what it is.

It isn't psychic, it's something else.

Just curiosity, because I'm so curious,

I eventually ran into

something interesting.

I don't think this den

necessarily pulled me

psychically, like "come see us, Jim,"

but it almost feels like that because

it's happened to me enough times,

and especially here.

So just up around the corner,

I looked down and I saw the

grass was all matted down,

I thought, someone

came here for a picnic.

Except nobody comes here.

It was very unnatural looking,

so I just took... followed the trail up

and looked a little bit further,

and saw chewings on the tree.

I thought beaver?

No.

Den.

Wolf den?

Too fantastic.

Maybe fox or coyote.

Came up,

saw this,

virtually the minute I saw this den

within the minute, almost 15 seconds,

I was standing on a very

supple twig, branch,

it let loose as I started

walking toward the entrance,

just to look, I mean, I was 30, 40 feet.

Snapped me in the eye and it felt

like a hammer hit me on the head.

So you've got the mixture of exaltation

of seeing a wolf den,

the same time

getting spanked in the eye.

Just about knocked me out,

I knew I had a pretty

serious eye injury,

and it just came to me, you're

not supposed to be here.

I wouldn't have stayed here anyway,

'cause you can't be around wolf dens

without them possibly moving,

and I wanted to get out of here quick.

But the eye being injured by this twig

was too much to comprehend.

And I didn't know what to think,

except, is this another message?

Is this, come look at,

come, here's the den,

but don't come in.

As an investigative reporter as

I am, you wanna get the story,

you wanna tell every bit of the story,

but I'd done that in the arctic,

crawled into the den in the arctic,

and the wolves stayed there

the whole summer.

They didn't move the den,

they didn't leave.

But they were like family to me,

they trusted me.

These wolves don't trust me.

I haven't seen them with my eyes.

I've not seen the mother or father,

I don't know who these wolves are.

I've seen them on the trail cam,

but I've never seen them with my eye,

haven't heard them howl.

So it's haunting,

it's nearly haunting to me.

So it's like finding

a treasure under your bed

that was always there,

I'm trying to think of another analogy,

in your cupboard,

you find a stack of gold,

or a Rembrandt painting.

And I didn't know what to do with it,

except just get out of there quickly.

'Cause I know if I stayed,

they'd move the pups.

Did you hear that?

What I've learned in life,

I'm almost 70 years old now,

and I've learned that you really have

to come in through the back door

to change people's attitudes.

You can't confront it head on,

and convince someone to stop drinking,

stop smoking, stop speeding,

stop killing wolves.

You... have to somehow

come in the back door.

When I met you,

you're the only person I've worked with.

Uh, why?

I don't... I just had

an intuition that you,

and your message, and your

movie could make a difference.

So find that back door. I don't

know what that back door is.

That's what I thought I've

been doing my whole life.

I'm not sure.

I get a lot of beautiful letters.

I don't know.

It's easy to be discouraged.

But I have to think that there's hope...

here's hope.

We'll see, we'll see.

Then, the news came.

On December 21st, 2014,

a federal judge threw out the

Obama administration decision

to remove the grey wolf population

in the Great Lakes region

from the endangered species list.

A decision that would ban further

wolf hunting and trapping

in the three states, Wisconsin,

Michigan, and Minnesota.

U.S. district judge, Beryl Howell

ruled the removal was

arbitrary and capricious,

and violated the federal

endangered species act.

She concludes,

"at times a court must lean

forward from the bench

"to let an agency know,

"in no uncertain terms,

that enough is enough.

And this, is one of those times."

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