I breathed the stars

and followed a wolf trail

I bent to examine the impossibly big canine track in the snow beside the trail. “Someone has a huge dog,” I thought. Then I noticed another of the same shape alongside the first, but smaller. I realized these tracks filled the spaces alongside my own footprints, and I said to my friend, “Is this a…?” “Wolf,” he said.

Of course. Our group had just seen these wolves lounging on a hillside on an unseasonably warm December morning. But that day, they were way over THERE and we were way over HERE, goofily watching them through spotting scopes. Most of the wolf group lay low to the ground, difficult to see, though one lookout lifted a massive head or stood to stretch from time to time, exciting the humans below.

But now I actually touched snow where their enormous feet had pressed down as they loped along or stood, perhaps conferring about where to nap or pondering who’d peed on that sagebrush. They went about their wolfy ways and just a few hours later, I followed that wolf trail.

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I feel grateful to have experienced full disconnection for a week in Yellowstone, immersed with a group considering how to be a good ancestor. We spent mornings out on the land and afternoons reading, writing, discussing. I thought about what it means to be a good ancestor for humans in general, but also, especially, what it means for me. What does my handbook say?

This is a handbook under construction, but right now I believe being a good ancestor requires us to make a positive difference in our world, to our human and nonhuman relatives, to the animate and inanimate beings whose space we share, and in particular to the loved ones we hold close. To fulfill this responsibility I must nourish the best version of myself.

That all sounds, even to me, like a lot of empty language, too many words that say nothing at all. I hear my own voice chiding myself as an English student, “Show, don’t tell, how you nourish the best version of yourself!”

Georgie from our group painted this wolf for me and I LLLLOOOOVVVVEEEE it!!!

The showing: each morning I try to greet the day. When the sky lightens, I look eastward and take one or two moments to connect with the light. Without fail, a sense of peace comes with that greeting. I say good morning to each nonhuman friend I see or hear, usually a chickadee or a crow this time of year, or a meadowlark on spring mornings. In summer I walk around my townhouse perimeter and tell each flower I’ve planted how healthy it looks and that I’m glad to see it. On brief walks during workdays I sweettalk suspicious and barking dogs and tell them how good they are. I try to take care of myself, too. I spend as much time as I can with the friends I love, and with my two children. I share many meals with others, a time-honored way of strengthening human bonds. I indulge my creative spirit when moved. I block evening time from work to cultivate a quiet mind. I try to hold peace with the pillars of dissatisfaction that tower around me.

Most creation stories depict humans as flawed creatures, and I too am this. Despite my good intentions, I err by forgetting them. Sometimes I even fail to notice I’ve forgotten them, and neglect to make amends. But I eventually find my way back to the trail where each step is a prayer to be a good person. A good ancestor.

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Many people believe that when we die, our spirits become sky beings and join the ancestors among the stars. I thought of this on our first day in Yellowstone. It was frigid. Snow crystals glittered in the winter sunlight, and a turquoise sky bereft of clouds opened to the heavens and pulled all the warmth up, up until it vanished. As day slid into night, stars blinked on, one by one by one alongside a crescent moon. Once darkness had enclosed the valley, I spun myself into a blanket and lay flat on a metal picnic table.

Lamar Buffalo Ranch, facing east at dusk, Jupiter above.

I’d never before seen stars like this. The constellations glimmered down, along with a planet or two. Parallel to my body, the Milky Way arched above and I was reminded that the Blackfoot word for it translates to “wolf trail.”

But I felt, rather than saw, the infinity of blackness. It pressed me down like a dream and exposed me as an insignificant speck. A dust mote.

I breathed the stars, and they breathed me.

I was a pitiful human in the presence of powerful spirits.

After the week of retreat and reflection, I think perhaps these spirits are waiting for us to join them in that sparkling and breathless place of the ancestors.