Wild Wolves Always Stare Me Out in OD OG

Nearly a year since he’s been gone…

The other night I was thinking about the story of Lobo the Wolf…I am not sure where Alex first learned of the story. Its actual invention was many, many years before, in the 1890’s—but its discovery & subsequent retelling by Alex was in the year we were married, but living in separate places—both literally and figuratively. He told it to me in pieces…morsels of prose fed lovingly from his mouth to my ear every night I came to see him and spend the night. It was his way of soothing me when I was riding the gyre of anxiety that came for me most nights back then and still whisks me away most nights lately….Looking back now with the newfound understanding of Alex’s bottomless loneliness, it probably was also Alex’s way of rewarding me for spending the night…His thank you gift for me not leaving him to his other bedfellows–his syringes and packets of sleeping powder.

For a while at least, he was my NY Scheherazade…and for those metaphorical thousand nights, I listened to him tell me about Lobo, the wolf king of the Currumpaw Valley.

The settlers in the New Mexico valley had hunted all the wild prey that would have fed Lobo and his hungry, lupine ilk. The wolves had no choice but to turn their predatorial sights towards the livestock on the ranches–picking off calves on trembling newborn legs, dealing death to the chickens with a simple flick of their powerful jaws …The tang of blood in their mouth, blood on their paws, the wolves hunted. And angered the settlers. Rubbing their hands, with the friction of evil plans, the settlers put out poisoned animal carcasses for the pack. The settlers waited to find the gray devils dead in their fields, landmarks of death. But the wolves threw the poisoned carcasses to the side, devoured the good meat and strengthened their hungry pulses. The wolf pack continued on to tighten their toothy vices around the tender throats of the livestock. Traps, hunting parties & all other typical means of dispatching with undesirables failed…and the wolves continued to feast. At last, a $1000 bounty was placed on Lobo’s head.

Ernest Thompson Seton, the man who authored the story that Alex retold to me, was suckered in by the dangled promise of money. He poisoned several baits, trying to make sure any traces of human scent were gone and then he left them in a territory where he knew Lobo hunted. All the baits were gone and Seton, like the settlers, assumed Lobo’s imminent end…Anticipated the wolf’s organs turning to bloodless stones from the poison. However, he found the baits in a pile that Lobo had shat upon in contempt of the attempt on his life & those in his pack. Seton, interpreting Lobo’s defiant act as one of mocking Seton, tasted his desire for catching the wolf. It reminded him of copper, of a mouthful of pennies-his drive now the same as Lobo’s, a desire for blood.

Every attempt Seton made, Lobo evaded with the wile of a con artist…Unearthing concealed traps like Easter eggs. Seton’s frustration led to obsessiveness and obsessiveness led to heightened awareness. One day, tracking his prey, Seton found a set of Lobo’s tracks following closely behind a set of smaller tracks. He realized that Lobo, like any other hero, had a weakness: his mate, a white wolf named Blanca. Seton’s focus at that point became in capturing Blanca as a means to trap his actual target, Lobo.

It took a while, but eventually Seton captured Blanca. He came upon the white wolf held fast in his traps, whimpering—Lobo at her side. Lobo stayed with his mate as long as he could, but finally realizing her end was near and inevitable, retreated. Lobo called for Blanca from afar, desperately trying to get her to follow him. She tried, but was simply unable to escape. And so, Lobo watched as Seton and his partners killed Blanca and tied her corpse to their horses, dragging her off. A mournful symphony of Lobo’s plaintive wail reverberated off the red rocks and collided painfully with itself. While Seton felt empathy for the creature’s grief, he righted his compass and decided to stick to the stone-hearted course of killing Lobo for the bounty.

Quite often the things we love are the key to our undoing and it was the same for Lobo. Despite the danger, insane with grief, Lobo couldn’t keep himself from following Blanca’s scent to Seton’s ranch house. His sense of caution dulled by foggy cataracts of grief…his instinct for survival just a confused navigator now….or maybe, possibly, no longer caring, Lobo let his guard down & Seton exploited Lobo’s vulnerability. In the latent days of January, Lobo was finally caught…Traps snapping shut on all four of his legs like the clap of God’s mighty hands. When Seton approached Lobo, Lobo stood and howled at him—despite the maelstrom of pain he must’ve been in. Seton suddenly saw Lobo for the brave force of nature he was. More than that, Seton saw Lobo’s loyalty to his mate—not even her death (or the threat of Lobo’s own) could keep him away. And, in that moment, Seton realized that he couldn’t bear to kill Lobo…Instead, he and his men muzzled Lobo and brought him back to Seton’s ranch.

But brave things are proud things, if even to their detriment. Lobo refused to eat. When they secured him with a chain, he refused to even look at his captors. Instead, he gazed out at the horizon, his eyes fixed on some expansive tableau of freedom he knew that he would longer roam with his mate. Within 4 hours of Seton bringing Lobo back to his ranch, Lobo’s heart simply said no; No to a life in chains, no to abiding by the rules of the kingdom of men, and no to a future without Blanca. He simply gave up, died.

There is more to the story, but it is more about Seton’s path, as Lobo & Blanca’s story ended there on the New Mexican landscape, ultimately. The heft of guilt for his part in Lobo’s death sat on Seton’s chest like an anvil—as he had come to understand that he had had no right to interfere with nature & kill the wolves. Unfortunately, he came to understand it too late; after passing the fork in the road where he could have made a different decision, came to understand it after he had already committed to it. When we cannot bear the sadness of our reality, sometimes it is necessary to sit at the spinning wheel and turn the hay to gold. Seton wrote with respect about Lobo, about Lobo’s love for his white wolf mate, Blanca. Ultimately his telling of Lobo’s story led to changed views & the championing of conservation efforts in America.

Alex couldn’t have cared less about Seton’s story. In fact, I had to google Seton to see what even happened to him—because Alex never told me that part of the story. But I do remember him being genuinely invested in the story, his sadness when he got to the part of the story where Blanca was killed. He had held out hope that the crisis of doubt over what he was doing would happen earlier for Seton, that he would decide to spare her. In the end, Alex was right as he had always been about the unmatched cruelty of humans.

I’m not sure why the story touched him as much as it did. Back then, I thought it was because it was ultimately a beautifully romantic story; the devotion of 2 wild wolves, the intrusion of outside forces rewriting their love story into a tragedy…the one left behind dying of a broken heart. It was not unlike our story. We were two lone wolves pacing a cruel landscape…us against a world that didn’t understand we were just trying to survive… I thought perhaps part of the thrall of the story was that Alex saw himself as the Lobo to my Blanca… Only, the hunter that laid traps for Alex wasn’t a man at all, it was his own addiction. And so, eventually, it wasn’t settlers or the world or a bounty on our heads—no, in the end, it was me who wrote myself out of the story…Unable to stomach sticking around and waiting for the eventual snap of the trap, I just left him.

As a much older woman now than I was back then, I see now that I was actually the Lobo out of the 2 of us & he was the white wolf I followed out of love and loyalty. While I followed him everywhere, he was unable to avoid the temptation of whatever bait was in the trap. Like in the story, Alex was always my weakness and, in some ways, still continues to be so, even with time & death between us. Nearly a year since he passed & I still feel the strongest urge to to go to the place where my lover’s dead body rests to keen over the city we lived in, the life we had…It’s an instinct I can’t silence, that I’m not sure I want to. I mourn him deeply because I loved him so fucking deeply. If I don’t mourn and grieve for him, I don’t know what that means…

And while I was most similar to Lobo all those year ago, I am probably most like Ernest Thompson Seton now…coming to the most loving of conclusions far too late to do any fucking good. I am no longer a wolf at all—just a human…and I am trying to give meaning to the story of another’s life by telling it over and over and over…Ultimately, I know I cannot change the fact that Alex’s body is the rotting manuscript of all these stories, enclosed in a brown, dirt envelope, with no postage. But at this point, there is nothing left for me to do but write the wrongs….and hope that in doing so, maybe his death will make his life matter more.

Written, with love, for my husband in March 2021.