justnorth.com (justnorth.com) It’s all warm from the campfires flickering and just a wee internal drop. Mosquitoes gave up about an hour ago. I have my head on a birch log. Im stretched out on an air mattress that is gonna claim me shortly. The sky plays clouds, the screen changes and stars pop in and out of focus. Not much of a ground breeze, but the sky above must be redecorating tonight.

Glancing into blackness around my campsite I’m jolted as two yellow eyes stare at me. It’s a wolf.

Im froze in place. From one second to the next, I have gone from lazy camp lounger to sheer adrenaline shock. The eyes don’t blink or move. Wolf face features swell and dissipate as the fires flames illume, but the eyes glow steady yellow.

Without moving I’m thinking I need a stick or fire brand. The wolf is statuesque. With fire flickers I can see now the wolf is sitting in a haunches pose. Its grayish and no formed edges as the nights blackness shrouds the complete size. Is it alone? I am. Why is it watching me from so close? I don’t yell because I’m calming down. I have gone from almost filling my britches, to this is cool. Really cool.

Looking for the nearest stick from the fire that’s burning, just in case, I glance back and the eyes are soundlessly gone. I sit up quickly, and reach to protect myself from the big bad wolf. Tossing more firewood I start to get a bit unnerved. Where is that critter, and I yell “hey wolf come here”. Just dumb words shouted into the night, but it helps somehow.

Now I go hunt down my flashlight to try and locate his tracks while scanning my campsite. No tracks found and I’ll recheck in the morning. Wolf. Just saying the word in the night is teasing your own brain with out the ghost story. Its like my mind was on a preset and that pair of yellow eyes set it off from fifty years of tensed mental waiting.

My shoulders ache as I again ease back into the camping I came for. Im out here in nature. Nature showed up. So cool. Man, what was I so freaked out about? I just had a northern Minnesota timber wolf less then thirty feet from my campfire. Now im wondering if I hadn’t yelled “hey wolf” would he ghost back in?

I wonder what the wolf saw? What the wolf wanted? What the wolf was thinking sitting eyeing me? How long did the wolf stalk the darkness then slowly waltz in and sit his carcass down to watch me by firelight? Only one set of eyes, was it traveling alone, or that’s all I could see?

I was laying here feeling fat and sassy watching the sky above, aimlessly mindlessly soaking up the late summer evening. I just didn’t realize I had company. The trout whisperer