6 Quotes by Nate Blakeslee

In Of Wolves and Men, Barry Lopez recounts the story of an ethnographer posing a riddle to an elder among the Nunamiut, a tribe in northern Alaska. At the end of his life, the researcher asked, who knows more about life in Alaska – how to escape a blizzard, how to find caribou, how to survive on such a harsh landscape – a wolf or a man? “The same,” the elder replied. “They know the same.

It was her stunning blend of confidence and competence that inspired them, her indomitable will, her ability to bend a harsh landscape to her own ends, to do what needed to be done to provide for herself and her family every day, without fail.

Can a wolf in the wild experience what we know as joy and happiness?” Rick said, his voice breaking noticeably. “And my answer is yes.

Rick’s dream, though he seldom described it as such, was to someday tell a story so good that the people who heard it simply wouldn’t want to kill wolves anymore.

The science was on Smith’s side, but it didn’t seem to matter to ranchers and hunters, or to state legislators. The debate wasn’t about science anymore, if indeed it ever had been.

What we normally mean by ‘education,’ ” he once told a crowd of wolf advocates, is, “I want someone else to know what I know so they will have my values.” In his experience, it didn’t work that way.