Summers on Low Lake in Ely, Minnesota tend to organize themselves around a theme, and you never know what it’s going to be when you arrive: there was the summer of the derecho, the summer of the saskatoon, and the summer of the wildfires, where sunsets looked like moonrises in the hazy sky. This year is being recorded now as the summer of the wolf.
If you spend enough time in the Superior national forest, you’re going to hear a wolf howl. Often these howlings are fleeting, followed by disbelief. Was that a wolf? Are you sure it wasn’t a loon? Are you sure it wasn’t a college student howling for wolves? This summer on Low Lake, the wolves performed a daily concert at close quarters, just back in the trees. We suspected that the High Lake pack must have denned by Low Lake this summer, for not only did we hear the wolves howling every day, we heard the whole pack, and we could pick out the individual wolves by their voices, from the excited pups playing their pipes to the old alpha on his bassoon.
I can’t think of a better symbol for wildness than the howling of a wolf. Hearing a wolf howl makes you feel like you must be doing something right. Wolves howl to stake their territory, and they howl to communicate within the pack, but they must also howl because they like to howl, for they were howling to beat the band all summer long. And who can say they weren’t howling for the small audience of listeners on Low Lake? Could they have known how much pleasure their howling brought this audience member in particular? Who can say the wolves weren’t howling for me?
