Call of the wild

In the summer of '91 we were on Olympic National Park's Skyline Trail, which winds through some of the Park's most beautiful subalpine meadows and rugged outcrops. We passed a dozen black bears and a herd of elk, but a favorite memory is of a lone coyote.

Several in our group were hiking to a ridge top just after sunrise; one of our friends shouted out from below "Hey guys, there's a coyote coming your way!" We turned around just in time to see a coyote trotting nonchalantly toward us, heading to the high point on the ridge ahead. It passed within ten feet of us, hardly acknowledging our presence, then continued to the ridge top. I hardly had time to grab a few shots with my camera (thank goodness I now have autofocus!).

When the coyote reached the overlook a hundred feet away, it promptly tilted back its head and let loose with a long, quavering call. Adrenaline and awe flooded my body and mind; this is the kind of experience I always hope for in the wilderness! The coyote called several more times before ambling on. What a way to greet the day ...

Prairie wolves of Yellowstone

When gray wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s, they were entering a vast territory where prairie wolves (aka "coyotes") were already well established. So what happens when the big dog enters the territory of the small dog? The small dog--the coyote--loses big. I spoke with a man who accompanied researchers into the field and watched as a pack of gray wolves cornered a coyote. The coyote promptly lay on its back in a canine submissive posture--but the bigger wolves showed no mercy and closed in for a bloody kill.

Hearing this disturbed me a bit, even though I know enough about nature to realize that human sentiment carries no weight among animals in their Darwinian struggle for dominance and survival. In fact, we even have an expression for this: "It's a dog-eat-dog world!"

The thing is, I had photographed some of these coyotes in Yellowstone a few years before the gray wolves were introduced. The pictures turned out so well that I actually felt emotionally attached to the creatures. The most memorable experience was seeing a coyote just 50 feet away, with big snowflakes falling all around. It was mesmerizing to watch.

The next day I watched a coyote hunting mice under the snow. It stood there, with its ears pointed forward, listening intently ... then it suddenly leaped in a graceful arc and landed in the snow six feet away, with its snout buried in the snow. I can't remember if it caught the mouse or vole, but I was struck by the grace of the leap.

And that's where I'll leave my coyote tale for now. Coyotes will probably be widely hated for centuries to come (especially if they continue to invade suburbs and snack on cats), but in my experience they are a beautiful and intelligent expression of the wild.