How Wolves Change Rivers*

I don’t think human beings are so lazy they can’t spit out water melon seeds.

I think bio engineers believe taking the reproduction system (the seeds) away from the plant will cause people to buy more watermelons.

I wonder if it worked.

Seedless fruits are handy for humans, but to put a plant at the mercy of a human to propagate their specie boggles my mind. And it is just plain stupid.

But here, look at this, wolves, introduced by people, restored an ecosystem.

For 70 years wolves were absent from Yellowstone park. The land was virtually desiccated by the grazing animals. (And you know what happens when a food source goes away—pain, suffering and death.)

In 1995 wolves were introduced into the park and this small band of wolves changed the ecosystem.

The wolves reduced some of the grazing animals, but that wasn’t the biggest thing.

The remarkable thing was it changed the behavior of the grazing animals.

The grazing animals began avoiding certain parts of the park, mainly the gorges and valleys thus allowing trees to flourish there. Birds increased. Beavers moved in and made niches for other animals. The beaver dams made homes for animals such as weasels and foxes.

The wolves killed some of the coyotes, thus rabbits and mice increased bringing with them food for the wolves and hawks.

Bears came into the area because there were more berries.

And the wolves changed the river.

The regenerating forest stabilized the banks of the river so it stayed in its course. More pools and channels appeared. Erosion was minimized.

 If a small pack of wolves can change a river, think of what a small pack of humans can do.

Remember, it was a small pack of humans that introduced the wolves.

To the unsung heroes of the earth!

Love,

Joyce

P.S. The wolf picture at the top of the page is a painting not a photograph. Wow.

*YouTube “How wolves change rivers.”

Dancing with Wolves

It’s time to dance, to be joyful, and to honor the spirit into which we have been born.

A few days ago I trekked through an alpine meadow complete with a gurgling stream straight off ice melt, with plants and little flowers hugging tight to the earth.  I saw what the wild wolves see. I was at the base of Mt. Shasta.

Now I can’t think.

Ray Bradbury had a sign by his desk. “Don’t think.” People call that nebulous something various words—intuition, the internal knowing the muse, the Holy Spirit, God.

I sat on the mountain in a secret spot dangling my feet in ice water until they turned numb.  I thought I had something to say—to be a communicative wolf, but then I came down from the mountain. 

It will take a while to integrate I suppose.  To articulate what I learned. Maybe nothing, maybe everything. Maybe seeing that all creatures and non-creatures are imbued with spirit—the trees, the water, the flowers, the rocks, the little raccoon that wanted to look at me, but didn’t want me to look at him, that giant old Grandmother tree that fell to the earth, is crumbling, providing shelter for the little ones, and mulch for the ground—soon it will be soil.

I got it that human beings are not warring, sniping, sniveling, petty entities by nature. That has been drummed into them, conditioned into them, taught to them. Human beings are love, expansiveness, beauty, and children of a divine creative force.

Let’s dance.

Joyce