Calling out for help—pencil sketch, from memory.
weight champion of Yellowstone wolves,” by Rick McIntyre, and alpha female 42—the “Cinderella wolf”, as so crowned by National Geographic film “A Legend Returns to Yellowstone,” to their limping, adult, black son 253, who left home and ventured all the way to Utah before making a short stint as prodigal son prior to relocating to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. There were also the “Half-black” and “U-black” females—wolves that do not have number designations are usually given names based upon striking physical features such as color patterns or physical peculiarities—also, 251, 255 and so on. And yet, through all this, the core nucleus of the Druids remained—carrying on at their traditional den site near the confluence of Soda Butte Creek and Lamar River. Each wolf fit neatly into the fabric of the pack, its hierarchies, family roles, divisions of labor amid hunting forays, pup rearing, border patrol and inter-pack skirmishes; it wasn’t until the death of the longtime alpha pair that things took a turn for the worse.
I remember that sad Valentine’s Day when after picking up a group of students from the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel for a day of wolf viewing. Upon reaching lower Lamar Valley, aka “Little America,” we heard the news of 42, “The Cinderella female’s” radio transmitter switching over to mortality mode. The normal steady cadence of beeps that indicated her moving about the landscape had turned to the quickened pulse reflective, not of a steady heartbeat, rather the opposite, one that had been stilled forever. Somewhere high on Specimen Ridge during the preceding night, it was thought that the Mollies wolf pack had ventured north and attacked the Druids—managing to bring down their flagship female. Wolf 42 was the last of the original reintroduced wolves left in the Park (her sister, 41, was technically the very last wolf from the reintroduction left alive, she resided outside the Park to the east in Sunlight Basin). Her mate, the striking Wolf 21, who in his younger years was a handsome, jet-black wolf that had faded to a two-toned elder of impressive size and demeanor, followed his mate into the afterworld that following summer. It was believed that he had succumbed to some unknown, “natural cause,” so the official report read. His remains were discovered at the pack’s summer rendezvous site on Mirror Plateau. Wolf 21’s final resting spot was aptly situated in a calm setting beneath a tree on the edge of a forest clearing. The loss of a long-time alpha is often “the kiss of death,” but to lose both is something a pack rarely recovers from—not unlike the loss of an elder in a human family; the absence of the cohesion they provided leaves a family fractured, if not broken.
The fallout from the deaths of both the matriarch and patriarch of the clan took a few years to fully manifest. The Druid pack went through periods of changing leadership and instability. Ultimately, the cruel foothold taken by sarcoptic mange seemed to seal their final fate. A mange infection will spread across the body resulting in a loss of hair as the infecting mites chart their path across, and more critically, into the skin. Wolves afflicted with mange can often be seen stopping, mid-
Druid wolves feeding on a carcass, pencil sketch from memory.
stride, to pause and scratch the newest flare-up. ”Rope tails,” wolves or coyotes that have lost all of the hair from their caudal vertebrae revealing only the skin and bone of the tail are a sad sight, but the results can go much further. Denuded patches of skin may show up along the belly, flanks, hips, shoulders and face to the point where an animal can be as much naked as it is furred; vast stores of energy may be lost through the chill of winter. Sadly, this scourge originally stems from veterinarians in Montana having inoculated coyotes with mange during the early 1900’s, then released them to spread the ailment to their wild relatives as a form of “predator control”. When the last of the Druid sisters began showing signs of mange, a clear trajectory of events was at hand. It started with a little bit of itching, then more and more. Spots of fur began to go missing and with them went the silent prayers that these patches would not spread across their bodies like so many brush fires. People like myself who had come to see these animals not just as representatives of a species, but as individuals in their own right, did not speak of the feared outcomes.
On one clear, cold morning, with flickers of snow-top crystals making prisms out of the morning sun, we watched three Druid daughters from the Hitching Post pullout; it was with full understanding that the pack’s stature was at a precarious point. The females stood before us as tattered shadows of their former selves—mere willowy silhouettes against a snowy tableau of barren white. Their lush winter coats were so compromised that they could not even bed down upon the snow; their insulation was gone. If they were to persevere, they needed an influx of new blood, males, in other words, to sire those precious pups-to-be; with no adult males in the pack, this was the only option to keep the bloodline alive. It was difficult to watch as those ladies that we came to know and had cheered through so many moments of success and hardship, now stood on the edge of the abyss. If they were to get any rest at all with their coats in shambles, the girls were forced to bed down in the exposed soil beneath evergreen trees. And where bare earth was not an option, the Druid daughters were left to stand, leaning against one another, like so many weary travelers propped against the lamp post of their failing family tree. The wolves only hoped that their companionship would help conserve their precious energy reserves until they found some badly needed mates and able-bodied hunters. This opportunity did soon come in the form of two dark males that had just recently wandered in from points east of the park. As we continued watching with our spotting scopes, magnification turned up to high, it was clear that this was not to be: the males moved on. We were watching the last days of the mighty Druid pack.
That night, one of those females was attacked by another pack on the slopes of Druid Peak and was later found where she expired beneath a cabin at the Lamar Valley Buffalo Ranch—our own refuge from the elements during that wolf-watching program. For days after, the mental image of those female wolves standing out on the layered bluffs of Lamar River, naked from the mid-rift back, spines arched and heads bowed downward, flickered in and out of moments of idle thought; that picture, that feeling, that silhouette burned its way into my retinas. Visitors often think that those who get to live and work in the Park have the best jobs in the world, that every day is a miracle and adventure, but it comes with ‘edges’. The unspoken caveat that looms at every turn is that if you are honestly in touch with your surroundings, you cannot simply disconnect from these lives that run parallel to your own. To be free of that unsettled emotional state in these unhappy times only means that one has not fully let the place soak in.
Druid wolves, ball-point pen sketch from life.
Watching those wolves echoed that classic piece of American sculpture—“The End of the Trail” by James Earle Fraser (1876-1953). This piece of art depicts an Indian brave mounted on his pony, buffeted by winds as the last chapter of the free Indian came to a close. These two images mirrored an inevitable fate that was to befall both of them. I could not find words to express these feelings, nor to exorcise the demons whose heads had stretched up out of cracks in the earth. Turning to working with some modeling wax was all I could do.
About a year later, I was cleaning out the cupboards of all the past study sculptures and found the one in the top image; it still captured something bigger, something deeper. Holding that fragile little wax rendering in my hand I was brought back to that very day, those feelings. Not all art is pretty. Any art that is of value to society shines a spotlight on those things that make us indelibly human. There was something beautiful shown to me on that tragic morning in the park. Despite the recognition that her life was soon coming to an end, that wolf continued to stand as strong as she could—holding true to that spark of life still residing within her—her enduring spirit. We bore witness to a state of grace under the harshest of conditions and of a life that was just that, alive. In the final days before my own father’s passing, I saw within him an incredible strength in the face of his greatest suffering; that ability to persevere has been a guiding force in my life ever since. Experiences in life that we do not choose can often have a twisted way of making the world, and certainly the way we see it, better. All was not lost in the final days of the Druid empire and with those noble daughters. We still have descendants of the Druids using that same traditional den site and now, all over the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. They are present here as reminders, points for reflection, to teach us again how the the world is and to show us how to be better people.
To see George’s sculptures, visit the Gallery. To purchase this sculpture, contact us.