During my little sojourn to the North Cascades, I decided to stay at Loup Loup Pass north of Twisp, which is in high country bristling with pines. It is the kind of place where ravens croak noisily throughout the day, the pines are filled with songbirds and elk bugle in the woods. At just over 4,000 feet, it is cool and pleasant when compared to the nearby valleys and canyons of the Columbia basin, and it is one of the wildest places in the lower 48. Therefore, it wasn’t surprising to find evidence of elk and bears scattered around the campground, but when sun went down I heard a delightful and unexpected climax to the symphony of nature.
While sitting in front of the fire under the sparkling vault, the night sky so clear the stars looked as though they could be plucked right out of the heavens, a long howl pierced the cool air, lingering for some time before another answered. Two wolves were calling each other after the long day; perhaps one was letting the other know he was coming home after a hunt. Then, much to my surprise, a warbling, musical little howl rang out from the same direction as the responding howl and carried on quite excitedly for a while. It was a pup, responding to his returning parent, happy to hear daddy coming home. It was an endearing sound, and it reminded me that in a few noble species the bond between father and child is forged by nature itself.
Wolves, like humans, pair bond to raise their young, and only deviate from that family model in unnatural circumstances, such as captivity, disease and overpopulation.
Hearing the wolf family was reassuring, as it reminded me that nature is resilient. Wolves were eradicated from Washington state by the 1930s due to government bounties and systematic extermination, but they have been returning in recent years. When the state sets its efforts to suppressing nature, the results can be devastating, but when it relents there is hope for recovery.
The return of the wolves to the high country of the Okanogan offers us a hopeful example. Someday, the state assault on the natural family and program to eradicate the father child bond can be reversed. Efforts to domesticate and stunt the natural man, bending him into a servile cur who exists solely at the pleasure of his masters, will eventually fail, and when a father calls to his family his children, like the wolf pup at Loup Loup Pass, will cry out with joy, and not sorrow.
