COME AND SEE

Come and see the wolves. In Idaho, they're everywhere. Wolves are in politics, on the news, and pasted on billboards. They're on T-shirts and bumper stickers, in the comments sections, and in the wild places. The wolf is not just a wild animal in Idaho. Wolves are powerful and potent symbols. They represent fear, hate, and death. They are dualistic, paradoxical, and Janus-faced. Wolves also represent courage, love, and rejuvenation. They stalk the psyche of the Gem State and fill minds with equal amounts of hysteria and mania. I call it "wolf madness."

I've lived in Idaho my entire life. The wolf wars have been going on for as long as I can remember. They started as rumors, hearsay, and myth. Wolves were an enemy defeated long ago, but their shadow remained. People claimed there were still wolves in the highest reaches of the Idaho mountains. They were ghosts, phantoms. The immaterial wolf was something to fear. 

Wolves were in the wilds, waiting for their chance to spread. People warned wolves were coming back. Some people were ecstatic about it. The Environmentalists were bringing them back. And wolves did come back. When they returned, the rumors of war became the real thing. It's a war fought on all fronts of Idaho life. And like all wars, the wolf war is madness. 

Come and see how they want to treat wolves in Idaho. Some people want to run in the woods with the wolves, name them, hug them, pet them on the head, and take selfies. They want to get a howling wolf tattoo. Others want to run in the woods with the wolf, hunt them, kill them, then hug their dead carcass for a trophy photo. They want to tack a wolf pelt on their wall. 

Some want wolves to live cornered in Idaho's wildest spaces where they can be killed in human versus beast gladiatorial combat, like the venatores of ancient Rome. They want wolves to exist so they can have a worthy adversary to overcome—if they want wolves to exist at all. A few want wolves to become ghosts again. They want to kill the wolf and capture its strength, cunning, and hunting prowess.

Others want to see the Gem State's wolves run free with impunity, believing wolves should own the forest. They want wolves to become celebrities and venerated fetishes with social media accounts and followings. A few want wolves to be gods again. They want to come to the forest seeking the wise wolf's council and imbue themselves with the wolf's courage, loyalty, and strength. 

Both sides of the wolf war want to enculturate the wolf to anthropomorphize it into an image that serves a narrow purpose. They want you to believe only their version of the wolf exists. It is wolf madness.

Come and see Idaho's wolf war, where eradication, extinction, reintroduction, conservation, and management mean the same thing: control. 

Idaho's wolves run the forest, constantly pestered by human hands. One hand pets the wolf between the ears, and another has a gun to its head. For good or evil, Idaho's wolves just want to wolf.