Why are wolves so feared and reviled? How do the stories we tell about them unconsciously shape our relationship to our environment? When is fear healthy and realistic?
Portland author Erica Berry’s debut book, “Wolfish,” wrestles with these questions, blending memoir, science and cultural commentary in a masterful exploration of fear in the American cultural unconscious.
In early 1999, a collared Idaho wolf, B-45, was the first wolf to cross into Oregon. Although most Oregonians had no personal experience with wolves, the response was hot and hateful. Vehicles sported bumper stickers reading “Wolves: Government Sponsored Terrorists” and people angry with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said the “blood of local children would be on their hands” if they didn’t kill the wolf.
By contrast, in 2011, the legendary wolf known as OR-7 dispersed from his pack in northeastern Oregon’s Wallowa Mountains, crisscrossing back and forth into California before settling down in the Rogue River watershed east of Medford, Oregon. Coverage by the media humanized OR-7’s journey in search of a mate and generated public support for OR-7.
Same state, two very different responses. For some people, wolves came to stand for conflicts about public land, government intervention and the urban/rural divide; for others, they were an animal worthy of protection. How did wolves come to be so inextricably connected to our deepest fears, despite the fact that for their size and standing as a predator, wolves are among the least dangerous species?
Berry’s explorations of fear often revolve around the very real threats women face in the world. Berry recounts several experiences where she was threatened by men and meticulously tries to untangle how the fear experienced in those events has continued to manifest in her life. One thread she identified is the story of Little Red Riding Hood, the original girl-as-prey story. As one of the first victims American children may encounter, Little Red’s shadow unrecognized can take up residence in our psyche.
Berry remembers feeling brave as a child, but finds it difficult as an adult to weigh who is worthy of fear when so many of the stories she inherited about fear were false. Sarah Manguso wrote in her book “300 Arguments” that “the well-adjusted seem to distribute their fear across their lives, not just keep it in one area, so it seems to disappear.” This response means the forest of Little Red Riding Hood becomes fear of, not the “forest,” but the entire world outside the house.
“Wolfish” examines both the real Canis lupus as well as the “symbolic wolf,” a term that originated with veterinary anthropologist Elizabeth Lawrence. The presence of the symbolic wolf is evident in many phrases used around the world. Elle a vu le loup (she has seen the wolf) refers to a girl losing her virginity. “Keep the wolf from the door” appears to have come from poor peasants of medieval England and describes having just enough money to eat and live. “Crying wolf” has become synonymous with lying. A hoarse voice in France may be described as le loup, silenced by the fear of a wolf.
When a female jogger was attacked and raped in Central Park in 1989, newspaper headlines described her as “Wolf Pack’s Prey,” equating the wrongfully convicted “Central Park Five” Black and Hispanic boys with being bloodthirsty predators. Native essayist Elissa Washuta succinctly describes this problem with the symbolic wolf: “Symbols are problems when they reduce what shouldn’t be reduced, placing a significance not in what something is, but in what it brings up beyond itself.”
On a more positive note, Indigenous and some other world cultures tell a different story about wolves, seeing them as benevolent or protectors. Quileute elder Fred Woodruff says of wolves, “We learned from the wolf how to survive and how to be more human … and the loyalty you need to really belong to a tribe.” Culturally, we’ve chosen to mainly tell the story of wolves as dangerous predators but Berry asks, “What if the story we told was that one creature’s thriving did not have to come at the expense of another?”
Novelist Margaret Atwood famously said: “All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is.” “Wolfish” is no exception. With fear taking a more dominant position in our post-pandemic, climate change threatened lives, Berry’s explication of this emotion is both timely and provocative.
Lisa Gresham is the collection services manager for the Whatcom County Library System, wcls.org.
