The rest stood watching, heads cocked to the
side. As though they were stunned by the rude-
ness of it. Then, one by one, the wolves turned
and looked at me.
This is a difficult sensation to describe—the
lock-on moment when a group of predators
sights you and holds your gaze for a dozen
heartbeats. Humans aren’t usually the objects
of such appraisal, though my body seemed to
recognize it way down beyond thought. I shiv-
ered again, and this time it wasn’t from the cold.
However playful they’d appeared a few minutes
before, these were wild wolves. Their white coats
were dark with gore. The carcass they’d been
feeding on, a muskox many times larger than
me, lay nearby with its rib cage cracked open,
the bones splayed like a fan against the sky.
The wolves watched me silently, but they were
talking to each other with flicks of their ears, the
posture of their tails. They were making deci-
sions. And after a few moments they decided
to come closer.HERE IS PROBABLY NO
other place on Earth
where this would hap-
pen. It’s why I traveled
to Ellesmere Island, high
in the Canadian Arctic,
joining a documentary
film crew. The landscape
is so remote, and in winter so cold, that humansALONE WITH WOLVES 121