For a Moment

(This was written as a personal narrative for a college composition class my first year of college. I reread it, and ponder how much I've grown and how much growth there is to experience.)

Footfalls on dry leaves broke the dark afternoon reverie I was in. I listened carefully in the direction they had come from, but heard only the silent trickle of the Autumn stream close by. I became lost in the sound of the water.

Again footfalls.

Am I being stalked, I wondered? I crouched low and listened hard, scanning the woods for movement. I loosened the knife on my belt, comforted by its smooth leather-wrapped handle. The only movement came from the Chick-a-Dees flitting in the hemlock trees. I felt foolish.

Footfalls.

This time, I was prepared and saw movement in the trees. I was ready to see a deer or maybe one of my brothers. But a gray and rusty figure emerged from the trees and my breath halted.

It was a large canine. My first thought was that it was a German Shepard. But while the seconds ticked by in that slow dimension of bewilderment, I realized that it had never been domesticated. There was no collar or even the impression one had ever been there, and its gaze was like nothing a domesticated animal could replicate. So calculating and unafraid were those amber eyes. It found more in me than I could ever find in it. Not twenty seconds did it study me before it bound away into the trees. It flowed over the hills, through the raspberry bushes and beyond my sight.

My mind buzzed with the encounter. One thought overcame all others: had I just seen a wolf? It certainly looked like one. Its fur was primarily gray except for a reddish undercoating. It was larger than any coyote I’d ever seen, with shaggier fur. Coyotes always seem skittish; unwilling to stop and obey curiosity in spite of danger. But the canine I saw that day showed no fear. In fact, as it leaped away, I got the distinct impression of superiority, as if it were saying, “You are just a visitor and must return to your womb of artificiality. I live forever in Reality.”

The encounter was staggering, and I crouched there in the middle of the forest trail for a good half an hour interpreting it. When my brain finally switched back to reason, I began to doubt my impression of seeing a wolf. It must have been a coyote, or a wild dog, I told myself. The wolf has long been extinct from Maine, and even if the few reports of wild wolves are true, they would be too elusive for me to see them.

But what if I had seen a wolf, just not in physical form?

To admit this, even to myself, is strange, but why not? I grew up being taught Christianity, and have added my own beliefs and philosophies to that spiritual foundation. So why the unwillingness to believe that I’d seen a wolf spirit? It probably has to do with the common human question of “Why me?” There is a certain amount of timidity when dealing with the divine, and when face to face with the potentially supernatural most will wonder why such a vision would come to them. I wonder what purpose a spirit would have in showing itself to me. At the time, I was in my early teens. As all young adolescents must, I was defining myself, struggling to find my place in the world. It was a lonely struggle, filled with social angst and educational demands. This forest was my sanctuary, these walks were my meditation. Alone I worshipped the wilderness that for a while could hide me from the mechanized world of human civilization.

It was then that the wolf came. A majestic creature of my imagination incarnated in flesh-or spirit. It filled me with a sense of the mystical. It reminded me that beyond the concrete barriers of human existence, beyond the complex steel web of social expectation, and imbedded deep in all of us is the reality of Eden. It is the illusion of civilization that constantly occupies my mind, but that vision, born of a walk in the forest, did much to clear my mind, offering me a glimpse into the world of the Wild.

Now, as a young adult sitting in a college dorm room, with conventions of the modern world surrounding me, I reflect on the encounter and wonder. A coyote it probably was. A wild dog it probably was. A wolf? Probably not. A spirit? I’d love to believe so, but reason shoots doubt into the idea. Nevertheless, I still feel the soul of the wolf was present in that encounter; some underlying nature in my mentality. And if it was just a mental longing to see something that physically wasn’t there, wouldn’t that be spiritual in itself? I gained something from it; a new way of seeing the world, perhaps a hidden part of my core that I‘d never before realized. A glimpse into the mind of the wolf, and that image drives me.

In the forest I imagine myself as the wolf. I flow over the hills, and through the raspberry bushes. I stalk human hunters in the fall, unheeding the danger of being mistaken for a deer, overcoming fear for the sake of the experience. I howl at the moon. I lose myself in the Wild, for I know that I must return to the womb of artificiality. I taste Reality, but know that as a human, it’s mine for but a short while.

For the moment.