by Nick Jans
A growing stream of watchers and gawkers added to the usual bunch of glacier area users. Families and groups of teenagers wandered out on the lake, throwing back their heads and howling in response to Romeo’s calls; furtive individuals prowled along the lake edge at odd hours, up to who knew what. Word was already spreading that all you needed was the right dog to bring the wolf up close, and the whole thing was way cool and no worries, just one big Alaska amusement park ride. Even people with zero experience around large wildlife and close to zero control of their dogs felt free to spin the wheel and see what happened. Some have-nots borrowed dogs or drafted along behind others, looking for an in, adding to the procession. There’s something sexy about getting tight with big, wild carnivorous things, and that aura sucked in all kinds of people and rendered addlepated a few who should have known better. I couldn’t blame them, even if I wished they’d stay home. And how was I any different, really? Around the vast majority of people, the black wolf remained aloof; though he watched from the lake’s edge, he’d vanish into the brush if they pressed any closer than a hundred yards—still, an incredibly tight distance by most wolf-viewing standards.
As is so often the case, familiarity inevitably led toward contempt among certain locals. While plenty of people kept their dogs leashed or under voice command, others didn’t see the harm in letting canines of varying size, shape, and temperament do whatever with the wolf: bark at it, play with it, chase it. More than a few individuals actively encouraged their pets, even fearful or snarky ones, to approach Romeo, hoping to get a paw-around-the-shoulder cameo with their dog and that dark, handsome stranger. And hey, why not line up the kids, strike a pose, and get a family picture with the wolf in the frame for next year’s Christmas card? Though it might sound loony, I watched folks staging just that sort of thing with young kids by the end of that first winter, and time and again over the years. More than once when I was out monitoring the action, someone shoved a point-and-shoot my way, asking if I’d mind taking a group snapshot with the wolf in the background. Considering many, if not most, people didn’t have a clue regarding wolf behavior or how to act, everything was up to the wolf—who’d take the hard fall if something went wrong. The possibility of a defensive-aggressive response to a human or dog couldn’t be dismissed, especially given some of the crazy in-your-face stuff a few people were pulling: pushing ever closer, sometimes surrounding him, making sudden movements, sometimes pursuing him into the alders. Even a sociable wolf had his limits.
Meanwhile, more serious photographers in steadily increasing numbers added to the mix, lugging their gear around the lake as they angled for that elusive image of a lifetime. One local pro in particular, a talented and well-regarded nature photographer named John Hyde, began showing up on an almost daily basis and soon became a fixture at the lake. He, like I, recognized the magnitude of the opportunity and was obviously more willing to push the envelope to get his shots. While I sometimes ground my teeth, I resisted the urge to tell him his business. One thing was for sure: if Romeo had set up a photo booth and charged fifty bucks a pose, he could have made a different sort of killing than most folks might envision when they heard the word wolf.
Inevitably, the black wolf had created a splash point and a concentric set of ripples tough to ignore for the agencies responsible for overseeing the land and both the safety and conduct of the general public. The Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area comprises a sliver of the gargantuan Tongass National Forest (at 17 million acres, the largest of its kind in the country, and one of the largest such areas in the world); thus the Forest Service assumes responsibility for managing the land itself and the behavior of human users. Though the federal agency reserves most supervisory and enforcement rights for itself, overlapping the state’s enforcement in a manner best defined by some fuzzy-edged Venn diagram, it generally defers on wildlife management issues (for example, a certain overfriendly wolf) to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. As far as ownership went, most of the land the animal roamed belonged to the federal government; the wolf himself, to the state of Alaska; the laws governing his management, to both entities. However, in the course of a day’s wandering, Romeo might start off on federal property, stray into private holdings, trot across ground belonging to the city, amble onto a snippet of purely state-owned land, and finally return to the glacier—each an area with its own set of rules, regulations, and issues. Matters of management, public safety, and enforcement might involve the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the Alaska State Wildlife Troopers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and maybe even the Juneau Police, all depending on what might happen and where. Despite that jurisdictional tangle, and the emotion-laden issue at hand, the action taken by all agencies regarding the black wolf that first winter can best be summed up in a single word: nothing—in the active sense of that word.
Though the wolf was a blip on the official radar, his own behavior set the tone. What the hell to do about a sociable wolf—not a momentary, but an ongoing and regular phenomenon? No one had ever heard of such a thing. Though he cast a large, dark shadow, and a few folks might wax indignant or get worked up by the sight of him so close to little Muffin or the kids, so far, he hadn’t actually caused any more trouble than any mink or mountain goat, and far less than your average dumpster-diving bear. The Department of Fish and Game posted an advisory letter or two in the Juneau Empire, cautioning residents to keep their distance, obey common sense, and keep dogs under control; besides human and canine safety, there was the possibility of the wolf contracting canine diseases or parasites and transferring them into the wild population—people a danger to wolves, not the other way round. A few private citizens chipped in letters to the paper echoing their own concern or indignation at overfamiliar interspecies behavior. The message rang clear: people and wolves just shouldn’t mix, period.
If the wolf or dogs or anyone else read the Empire, they showed no sign. And given the whole scenario—the size of the area; its numerous access points; the wolf’s drive to pal up with canines; the number of people involved; and a growing willingness on the wolf’s part to tolerate humans, coupled with the magnetic fascination so many felt for him—there was little that could have been done to shut down the contact, short of closing the whole recreation area. Close encounters were inevitable and an almost daily occurrence. “We were in uncharted territory,” said Pete Griffin, who at the time held the supervisory post of district ranger for the Forest Service. “We chose to take no action because we had no cause. . . . It was a wolf in a national forest, in Alaska, which seemed appropriate enough.” He squinted thoughtfully, then grinned. “Actually, I thought having him around was pretty cool. People, not the wolf, were the real management issue, and for the most part, they acted in a respectful and responsible manner.” Notwithstanding a few glaring exceptions and countless minor bobbles, his point stood. So far, everything was working out better than anyone had a right to hope.
Naturally, no one consulted the wolf to see what he thought about the entire arrangement, most of all the stream of jabbering, alien beings that came and went in shining boxes, inexplicably proffering, whisking away, and ushering back playmates and potential pack members. On the other hand, his behavior explained his priorities as clearly as if he’d posted a manifesto on the Big Rock. Meeting dogs was job one; if hunting had mattered more, or the company of other wolves, or eluding people, he’d have been someplace else. That focused social drive ruled his behavior, though its presence indicated, at the same time, that his basic survival needs were being met. As always, he could disappear on a whim into places no one could follow, and either return on his own terms or keep on going. The wolf, though, continued to show little inclination to go much of anywhere, at least not in the far-ranging wolf sense of the word.
On a typical winter day, he’d be in position before first light to meet the prework and early-morning dog-walking crowd, as if he’d punched a time clock; of course, he preferred his favorites, but in
a pinch, others would do. By late morning came a usual lull, when he stepped back for a nap, with a good watching point nearby. Depending on the day, he might or might not appear again to the general public until midafternoon or even dusk—just in time for the after-work rush. Since bad weather generally reduced the amount of human and dog traffic, going out in less than ideal conditions, better yet in the murk of predawn or evening, made sense. Like most wolves, Romeo was apt to be most active at the edges of light, though he might hunt, sleep, or travel at any time, if the situation beckoned.
A scattering of hardy locals figured any inconveniences a bargain. One rangy, hawk-nosed guy with a long stride and a big black Lab mix took it to a whole other level. I sometimes spotted him from the house, on his way in off the ice at first light, having been out wandering Dredge Lakes with the wolf in the dark for who knew how long, often in weather that kept everyone else home. I couldn’t help admiring his tenacity but felt dark, possessive stirrings: Where did he get off? Who the hell was he? Though I didn’t even know his name back then and wouldn’t meet him face to face for several years, despite speaking on the phone and often passing within several hundred yards of each other without so much as an offhand wave, Harry Robinson and I were destined to become allies from afar and friends later, drawn together by our shared bond to the wolf. Years later, I heard his full story.
Harry and Brittain first met the black wolf about the same time we had. They encountered him not at the glacier, but three miles down the Mendenhall valley, on the less-traveled, hillside branch of the Brotherhood Bridge Trail. The trail system led through a wooded preserve along the seaward course of the Mendenhall River, set aside by the city of Juneau in the late 1980s when helter-skelter development seemed poised to gobble the entire valley floor. Bordered by neighborhoods and businesses, Brotherhood serves both as a popular recreation area and part of that central wildlife corridor linking glacier to tidewater. Harry had been taking Brittain there before work in the early-morning winter darkness, and he recalls the dog had sometimes strayed into the hillside forest above the trail and returned when he called her—though she still seemed intent on something unseen, above in the trees. Then, dog-walking with a friend, Harry encountered hand-sized paw prints in fresh falling snow, with no accompanying human tracks. Some huge, loose dog, the two men figured, as their own ranged ahead. Around the next bend in the trail lay a small meadow, and there they found their pets, playing with the maker of those tracks—not a dog after all.
“He was gangly,” said Harry, “but just enormous, and he had this luxuriant silky coat, like he’d just come from a grooming salon.” Brittain and the wolf seemed so relaxed and familiar around each other that Harry guessed they had probably been meeting those times she’d disappeared. “They were touching noses and rubbing against each other, like old buddies,” he recalls. “He wasn’t nearly as interested in my friend’s dog. . . . At one point, he was standing next to Brittain and leaped right over her back, sideways. It was all pretty amazing.” The two men stood mesmerized in the gray light and sifting snow, uncertain what to do and concerned for the safety of their animals. Like all of us in those early days, they were figuring things out on the fly. Finally, they called the dogs back and leashed them, at which point the wolf raised his muzzle skyward and began to howl nonstop. Not sure what that might signify—agitation building toward aggression, or who knew what—the two men retreated.
Just as I’d been, Harry was hooked at first sight. He’d been raised in a family steeped in the outdoors. From early on, his father (a nomadic jack-of-all-trades, once a hunting guide) taught him tracking, survival, and shooting skills. As a four-year-old, Harry had befriended an orphan mountain lion cub his family had taken in, and his fascination with wild country and animals of all kinds continued into adulthood. He picked up a geology degree at the University of Washington and became a part-time wilderness guide for REI in Seattle, leading trips to forgotten mines in the central Cascade Range. He also explored remote, off-trail areas on his own, where several times he caught fleeting glimpses of wild wolves (where officially there were none). He volunteered at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo and wangled his way into spending time with the zoo’s wolf pups, with whom he struck up a special bond.
In 1996, Harry moved to Juneau, following a job offer, the call of adventure, and the added cachet of romance with a longtime girlfriend who’d come north ahead of him. Though the relationship eventually faded, he stayed and settled in, picking up where he’d left off Outside (as the lower 48 is called by Alaskans)—taking long hikes in the surrounding mountains, many of those walks alone and off-trail. After he adopted Brittain at the local Humane Society, she became his constant companion—and, as events unfolded, his emissary to the heart of the wild.
He met the wolf before full light most mornings, not only at Brotherhood, but on the north end of the Mendenhall Wetlands Wildlife Refuge, an expanse of ecologically rich tidal marsh dotted with islands of trees, adjacent to residential neighborhoods, a checkerboard industrial zone, and the airport. It hardly seemed wild country in the Alaska sense of the word, except that now the icon of wilderness patrolled its area, redefining it by his presence. Harry and Brittain sought the wolf at least as much as it sought them, and they found each other on an ever-increasing basis. Though a spayed female herself (there seemed to be some sort of pattern, though with frequent exceptions), Brittain was large-bodied and tall, better matched than most dogs to the wolf in weight, though hardly in power or grace, where no dog could keep up. The two seemed to perfectly understand each other, and the wolf allowed the dog to play-bite, shoulder-slam, and generally bullyrag him. While accepting faux insults on end, Romeo offered none in return—another expression of the good-natured forbearance that seemed ingrained in his being. Harry, meanwhile, harbored no illusion that the wolf had any attraction toward him; he acted in the interest of the two canines, who seemed equally attracted to each other, as he himself was increasingly attracted to the wolf. Whether he admitted it to himself or not, Brittain’s role in the relationship was gradually shifting from intermediary toward avatar. Standing by as a neutral presence that posed no barrier and remained predictably calm, Harry was included ever closer, and accepted within their circle.
Within a few weeks of the first encounter, Harry, Brittain, and the wolf shifted their meeting grounds out toward the glacier, which by then had become the wolf’s territorial headquarters. Far as Harry was concerned, the Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area offered advantages over the wildlife refuge or Brotherhood—fewer prying eyes and interference, more space to roam. The trio began meeting not only before dawn, but in the evenings as well, and vanished off-trail in Dredge Lakes for hours at a time. When he arrived at the parking lot, Harry would howl a few times (in poor semblance of the real thing, he admits), and within minutes, the wolf would appear. Bad accent or not, Romeo clearly recognized both message and messenger. Then off they’d go, the wolf leading the way through his territory to secluded nooks and glades where no one else ventured. Sometimes Harry would linger much longer than he’d intended; luckily, his work often allowed him to rearrange his schedule. And, being a single man of few encumbrances and singular focus (back in Washington State, he’d been a top-level tournament billiards player), he did all he could to nurture the relationship between dog and wolf. “Seeing Brittain seemed to mean a great deal to the wolf,” Harry said. “You could tell by his reactions when he saw her, and how disappointed he sometimes was when we left. I hated to disappoint him.” The black wolf—Wolfie, as Harry called him privately—became the central focus of his life. He locked on to those hand-sized tracks before him and never turned back.
Like Harry, I traveled out alone in my share of snotty conditions— times when it snowed so hard the wolf’s back and head were piled thick in white; or cold plunges when frost coated his muzzle and eyelashes, and his howls rose in frozen plumes; sudden thaws, when the lake turned to a slushy, soft-edged mess; and whiteouts, when depth perception evapor
ated into a void without shadow, and every step was uncertain. One truth was driven home by trailing him in those conditions: the wolf lived and moved each day in a world hard beyond our reckoning.
Out on the main lake trails on a sun-warmed late-winter day was another matter—an odd combination plate of wilderness experience and crowd scene, sometimes verging on a carnival atmosphere, especially on weekends. Dozens of people and dogs a week—a mixture ranging from day-in, day-out diehards to the merely curious—marched, trotted, shuffled, loped, or glided toward the lone wolf and eddied around him as if he were a dark rock in our current.
Through it all, Romeo remained an incredible sport, even when some little terrier mix of unfortunate ancestry committed the hubris of curling a lip and snapping at his gently proffered nose, or a passel of jovial skiers and dogs ringed him without realizing it, cutting off his escape route and sending an unintentional threat. Like their owners, most dogs matched Romeo’s affable nature with their own. Some waxed cautious or fearful, others totally uninterested, and a tiny minority hackles up from the start. If a dog turned aggressive, the wolf, instead of bowling over the offender, would tuck his tail and dodge it with a weightless burst or sudden leap and blend his moves into a game. We all became accustomed to the incongruous spectacle of a cable-and-steel, 120-pound wolf striking appeasing postures before some mongrel that scarcely came up to his knees, and engaging in submissive play with rude underlings that he could have thrashed in an instant.
