Lessons from the Pack

One crisp autumn afternoon I hiked alone through a Rocky Mountain meadow, wondering if a dream I’d long cherished was dying. I’m a wildlife filmmaker, and I was camping out in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho to shoot a documentary about wolves. The film was to be an up-close, compelling portrait of a majestic but often misunderstood animal. Wolves, alternately feared as bloodthirsty predators and praised as symbols of the American wilderness, are wary and elusive creatures, extremely
difficult to see in the wild, let alone film.

To capture them on camera in a relaxed state, I had formed a small wolf pack—two adults from wolf rescue centers and four pups born to other captive wolves—and designed a 25-acre enclosure on the edge of a wilderness area where they could roam in a spacious natural habitat. My crew and I lived in a tent camp within the wolves’ territory. We gave Native American names to the wolves to identify each one but made no attempt to teach the wolves their names or to initiate behavior or interaction. Our goal was to be a constant but unobtrusive presence, documenting daily life inside what we came to call the Sawtooth Pack.

That afternoon, though, as I hiked through the wolves’ territory of alpine meadows, streams and forest, all I could think was how much had gone wrong in the year and a half since I’d begun. Though the project was miles from the nearest paved road, it was still in a part of the country where wolves’ presence is controversial. From the beginning we had received anonymous letters warning, “Move the wolves immediately or we will!” The U.S. Forest Service, which had issued permits allowing us on federal lands, was caught in the middle. I worried we would be forced to shut down.