The Wolf

Every morning I felt like it was my first day of life, but this morning particularly so. My sight was clear, the stream I had drank from flushing away the dreams from my eyes and giving me its cold sharpness. I was running as if it was my first day of life, my paws and legs always a step ahead, the path in my long-sighted vision. I felt with the forest the alternating of its floors, between shining crystal of snow and free patches of freezing mix of mud and moss. Every instant a fast dance between the whole and the details. My paws hit the floor lightly, imperceptibly with a controlled steady pace. My meandering body merging between tree trunks and the space inbetween. In this morning dance, I was running, running and running in harmony with the lights reflecting through the pointy canopies of pine trees. It was a matter of experience not being overwhelmed by the richness of life in the forest. All of a sudden, my forward-seeing glacial eyes spotted a sign of a prey on the ground; a small wild rabbit. I could hardly smell its scent, a mild variation of particles and waves in the rich spiciness of the space around me. I ran with excitement, yet with the same controlled movement of front and backward legs, well aware that a complete surrender to my hanger might as well make me miss my prey. As I ran forward the scent intensified, my nostrils attuning more and more to one among many smells, like a composer looking for a specific tune in a melody, isolating it out for it to resound eternally in space. An exact note resonating..and then, silence. Silence, it was, seconds before my deadly attack. I grabbed the rabbit's small frantic body and drove a decisive bite into its neck. Life disappeared from her eyes, with her the forest lost for a second its vibration, and me with them, honoring the life given to me through someone's else's death. I bowed my head to the spirits. 

I quickly ate all the fresh meat I could find; eating is not a pleasurable act, it is a vulnerable time. I raised my head, scanning the area around me to make sure I was safe - my fangs red with blood, my nostrils full of a taste of rawness. It was then I saw her, in the corner of my vision. I turned my head to look at her better: what a weird odour. She looked at me, fear and doubt growing in my chest. What was I to do? Attack her? Run away? Try her? One-second decision: I left her behind. And just like that, life started again, energetically. Lights, smells, sounds, perceptions and the familiar pounding of my running heart. 

I had always been an early bird; a lifestyle I have only half chosen. As soon as the sun rises in the East, my body feels a strong drive to movement and vitality, as if not wanting to be left out in the circling play of sun, moon and earth. So, I could say, I adapted my lifestyle to my body's strong desires. In the frizzy morning, at sunrise, I walk for hours, my mind yet in a liminal space between dream land and reality, my physical boundaries merging with the trees in the forest. I rarely meet someone, sometimes a hiker, more frequently a dog taking his owner out for a walk. In the silent intimacy of dawn, I feel fully transparent, the cold perching through the many layers of my clothing, all masks falling at my feet. While I walk, I get easily excited when I hear a new sound or when I imagine the immensity of life that surrounds me, but I had never felt scared before that one morning of late december. My mind lost, I had hardly paid any attention to the path, my legs so used to following it, when suddenly I heard a low guttural grawl before a frightening silence. I walked in ecstasy a bit closer towards the sound, until I saw her: a magnificent wolf, tenaciously grabbing the body of a dead wild rabbit. She turned her gaze towards me, magnetically scanning my soul through my scared yet curious eyes. I could feel all the fears of my world coming up from my lower abdomen and filling every single corner of my body, now fully awake, frozen in survival mode. 

A look. That was it. 

The majestic wolf left lightly, her delicate and organic movement balancing the ferociousness of her fangs and the strength of her body. Me, a random irrelevant encounter in her experienced eye. 

I stood there a while, sensing a deep rooted wisdom in the space the wolf had left. I waited for the morning sun to unfreeze my fearful body and when I finally set out to move, a booklet on the floor caught my attention. It laid where the wolf had stood. I took it, constantly looking around me to check whether I was alone, like a thief scared of being caught during a crime. It was a booklet of poems, poems about fear, about life, about the wind and about water. A booklet about the Way. 

I took the booklet with me, honoring the wisdom given to me by the way of the wolf and by the death of the wild rabbit. Walking back through the forest towards home, my mind in a liminal state between dreamland and reality, I realised that all the fears I had been carefully masked were teachings, collected in a booklet of poems, captured in the magnetic gaze of a wolf.