I had interpreted Wolf’s kisses as gratitude and affection, but the wolf aficionados had observed wolf mamas in the wild giving their (and other pack’s!) babies a drink after they themselves had their fill of water. For about 10 years, I was thinking that she was offering a quid-pro-quo affectionate acknowledgment of my forethought in being a good dog-mom! It was not until encountering a wolf biologist and his photographer in the back country while hiking in Glacier National Park that I learned something else might be going on with our daily exchange. Each time after she would lap up what seemed like gallons of water to slake her thirst, she would make a beeline to me to give me a kiss. She was among my greatest and most beloved teachers in life. ( ) Since she required daily walks in the trees for her sustenance, I always carried water with us for the journey, especially in the hotter months. Many Prairiewoods friends know about my Siberian Husky, Wolfie, who was nearly 18 years old when she died.
Some of what we are learning by going deeper into the topic is a matter of shifting our perspective from anthropocentric (human-centered) ways of seeing to other-centered ways. ( ) We looked at our perception of other-than-human kin in their own integrity, rather than who they are solely in relationship to us humans. Now we shift our attention to our ethics, our practical ways of relating with our creature-kin in light of what we’re learning. On last Sunday’s blog, we began exploring the wild world of our creature-kin.
0 kommentar(er)
