6 Quotes by Jim Dutcher

What does a lone wolf want? It wants to stop being a lone wolf. It wants togetherness, to be a part of something bigger. Survival depends on it.

They are a tribe, a family, a fierce confederacy. They are also an assembly of individual personalities, private desires and goals and inner lives largely unknown. They are a wolf pack howling.

Like many other animals, they are emotionally intelligent beings. A wolf knows who he is, and he sees his packmates as individuals. He has a concept of how his actions are perceived by others. He is capable of empathy, compassion, apology, and encouragement.

As years went by we would receive heartbreaking news that one had passed, then another: feisty Wyakin, fearless Kamots, gentle Matsi. Piyip, one of Kamots and Chemukh’s three pups, was the last to die, in 2013. In one day 98,000 people shared his passing with us over the Internet. Emotional messages poured in. The Sawtooth Pack had touched the hearts of people around the world.

Each singer adds his own voice to the chorus but sings a song all his own.

Their lives and behaviors mirrored our own contradictions and complexities: social hierarchy tempered by compassion, contention mixed with cooperation, the admirable side by side with the abhorrent. Among all their qualities there were many we admired, but one stands out more than any other, especially considering all that has befallen them at the hands of man. Wolves can forgive.