A pup bites at a
feather while another
nuzzles the pack’s
aging matriarch, White
Scarf (far right). After
the last known kill she
was part of, White
Scarf made sure the
pups ate first and later
disappeared out on
the tundra. One of her
daughters tried to take
over as the new leader.IN THE BLUE LIGHT OF AN EARLY ARCTIC
morning, seven wolves slid across a
frozen pond, yipping and squealing
and chasing a chunk of ice about the
size of a hockey puck. ¶ The pond was
opalescent at that hour, a mirror of the
universe, and the wolves also seemed
otherworldly in their happiness. Back
and forth across the pond they chased,
four pups scrambling after the puck and
three older wolves knocking them down,
checking their little bodies into frozen
grass at the shore. In my notebook, in
letters made nearly illegible by my shiv-
ering, I wrote the word “goofy.” ¶ The
largest wolf, a yearling male, was a bully
at 70 pounds or so. The smallest, the
runt of that year’s litter, was hardly big-
ger than a throw pillow, her eyes lined in
black. A pair of ravens sailed overhead,
and apart from their jeering, there was
no sound on the tundra but the voices
of wolves and the click of claws on the
ice. Eventually the puck skittered into
the grass, and the largest pup chased
it down and chomped it to pieces.
KINGDOM OF
THE WHITE WOLF
Watch photographer
Ronan Donovan as he
tracks and observes
arctic wolves. The
three-hour special airs
on August 25 starting at
8/9c on Nat Geo WILD.120 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC