Notes for Pages 300-309.

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300. Jan sure can be an asshole, but then, you don’t establish dominance by being nice.

A reminder from previous notes: most mature wolves split off from their pack of origin to seek their own mate (and to reduce the total stress on local supplies of game). Larger packs – ie, packs with more mature adults than just the mating pair – mostly occur in areas with superabundant food reserves, or some other limiting factor that discourages splitting off (for example, wolf packs inside Yellowstone National Park). So-called “beta” wolves aka non-breeding adults are not a very common occurrence in the open wild, at least absent the presence of mega-herds of caribou.

The fact that these wolves have bonded with a pack of humans who protect them from being hunted, and share carcasses and other food with them means that the excess population hasn’t seen fit to split off. The result is a power struggle between Jan and his aging father Alesh, which Ariana’s mother is now interfering with.

Keeping out of wolves’ personal business is a challenge for many naturalists. We’re “pack” animals, too, and we can’t help but see humanlike drama in many of their conflicts. Wolves in captivity, deprived of the option to leave their pack and start another, can behave mercilessly towards each other even when there’s enough food to go around, and human intervention is sometimes necessary if you want to keep all the members of the pack alive for the purpose of breeding or observation. You can read about emotional and practical challenges like this in the work of Jim and Jamie Dutcher.

At any rate, what Ariana’s mother is doing here is pretty far-out. Also, Jan weighs about 100 lbs (45 kilos), so her lasso work here suggests she’s got some pretty good core strength.

Jan has been chastened (for now), as you can tell from the tail between the legs and the tucked ears.

301. The pile of hides here is a bit inspired by one of my favorite illustrations by Jillian Tamaki, for her stunning work in Irish Myths and Legends, published by the Folio Society.

The wolf skin from the murdered solo wolf is drying behind them on a traditional branch rack. It smells pretty bad in there right now.

302. Wolves can range long distances overland in a small amount of time; they don’t typically keep a “home base” like this unless there are pups too young to travel, so add that to your list of “unnatural things these wolves seem to have been taught to accept.”

When wolves bring down prey they’ll typically set up camp around it until they’ve eaten the entire carcass, but with this many wolves the carcass gets eaten quickly. Wolves can eat a huge percentage of their own body weight in one go, calorie loading for the uncertain days ahead.

303. The moon is a waning crescent, so the next night will be a new moon – “the eye will be closed.”

304. That library isn’t heated. Luckily fingerless gloves had already been invented.

Again, “Zigeuner” is the old German-language name for many Romani groups.

Luther doesn’t seem to put much stock in Romani-panic. Maybe dealing with pervasive anti-Semitism gives you a different slant on these things.

305. “Clever” is a recurring insult…

306. …but even Ariana’s mother can’t resist that parental pride in having a smart kid.

307. Constellations on the celestial globe are the ever-recognizable Ursa Major (aka the Big Dipper) and Orion the Hunter. Personally I’ve always thought that Ursa Major looked like more of a wolf than a bear. But then, I would. For his part, Orion was hunting buddies with Artemis/Diana.

308. I had a good time writing this dialogue. If you study the Western canon and happen not to be ethnically European, or Christian, or male, or from an intellectual class, you run into problems of exclusion and ownership. How much of a tradition can you internalize without also internalizing a sense that your own reactions and contributions are anomalous? Are you just eavesdropping on a conversation between ghosts, or are you adding to a living, centuries-long dialogue…that historically would have rejected your participation?

How do you keep yourself from being bitter than the work of an ancient Greek man is considered more “universal” to a modern reader than anything you could write simply because of your gender, or race, or religion? Can you really love something that fundamentally excludes you, without tacitly agreeing that your exclusion is appropriate?

Reading the work of lettered women, particularly in the Enlightenment through the 19th century, is an often heart-crushing experience. Geniuses minimize themselves as mere dilettantes, or entirely subsume their abilities in their husband’s (or other male’s) pursuits, or, particularly later in the 19th century, ditch on the system entirely and set out in search of radical equality by way of anarchism. If they won’t let you live in the house except as a servant – burn down the house.

Ariana’s mother is just a little ahead of her time. She would’ve liked Emma Goldman.

309. Luther is reading Spinoza, of course, from his thunderbolt of a letter on religious belief written to the born-again evangelical Catholic, Albert Burgh.

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