Black Wolf

It’s an hour before sunset and I set out into the hills.

I walk towards villager J’s house, the path past his house leads into the forest and the hills behind our village. I can see him sitting on his balcony, a shadow of his former self. He’s had heart problems for a while now, and he had a nasty fall recently, damaging one of his vertebrae. His wife, S, is walking with a strained gait down the path to the patch where her daughter and son-in-law are loading up wood for winter, loud clangs of logs landing in the trailer of the tractor.

 “S, you’re not walking well,” I say when I catch up with her. She turns and looks confused for a second, as if not being sure where my voice came from, but this is due to the fact she only has one working eye. I’ve never found out what happened to her. I’d like to think that she’s so wise she only needs the one to see. She can see through people.

“Oh hi!” She says, and stops, smiling, “It’s my hips,” she says. I nod in sympathy.

I’m at the side of the house now, and I look up at the balcony to greet J, clicking my heels and saluting him, as I always do when I see him. “Jefe de pueblo!” the village Boss, I shout and his face lights up a little.

“I am,” he says.

“You should be the mayor,” I add.

“Jefe de pueblo, and I’m the maid,” his wife jokes, and I put my arm around her shoulder. “No S, you’re the queen of the village.” I tell her, because she is. She’s one of the most genuine people I have ever met, with wisdom she’s oblivious to herself. A louder version of Seneca, and more hardened if that.

J is old now, but he will never be old in my mind. Whenever I see him a quick movie plays in my head. The first scene where we meet, him turning on my doorstep with a massive bag of corn cobs.

“I’m J.” he said, “I live over there,” he jerked his head indicating behind him, “If you need anything,” and he handed me the bag. “firelighters,” he explained.

I wasn’t willing to trust people yet. I had done so at the previous place we had arrived and thought we’d settle forever. I had assumed everyone was nice and that had cost us dearly. We were here to start again but it felt I had just ran three consecutive marathons.

The second time we met I was trying to chop firewood and failing miserably. It was a time I couldn’t tell pinewood apart from oak, and I was using the wrong axe. 

It hadn’t stopped raining for days and he just appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, with his bright yellow raincoat, dripping with rain.

He took one look at what I was doing, shook his head, and showed me what I was doing wrong without so much of a word.  But I knew I had made a friend.

Not long ago, after helping with pig slaughter and before he got ill, we had dinner at his house with his family, and I spotted the picture of him as a baby on the wall. I marvelled over the fact he still had exactly the same smile. He hadn’t changed. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who still wore the exact same smile from babyhood, and strangely enough, this gave me even more reason to like him.

J’s dog is loose and runs up to me enthusiastically, hoping I’ll take him with me on my walk again. He followed me yesterday into the hills, but there was a furious mastiff with sheep in a field, who decided to scramble over the stone wall and I worried for a few terrifying moments he would attack the dog.I had a stick and shouted at him to leave us alone, which luckily he did. But it could have ended up differently.

I explain this to S and she asks me if I can take him to the couryard to tie him up, I do so, rub his head and apologise to him. “Next time darling,”

“Take a stick!” J shouts from the balcony as I leave, holding up his walking stick, forever the protector, but I decline.

“I’ll find one on the path.” I shout while walking off. 

The hills belong to me. They were mine the moment I set foot here, 15 years ago although I didn’t know that yet at the time.

Mine to get lost in and explore, to stomp in puddles during autumn, walking barefoot through mud when the temperatures are mild in early spring and I will the the buds on the trees to speed up, mine to admire the slivers of fog in winter, and mine to feel the scorching sun on my skin in summer. Mine to scream my frustrations at when it feels I am going nowhere. It knows all my secrets, my dreams and my fears.

And mine to discover the ancient rock which just lay there lazily, shaped like a 3 metre wide half buried egg with its concentric circles. I always lean over to kiss the top and keep my hands there for a while.

In return, I belong to the hills. It’s a fair exhange.

“Aren’t you scared of going out on your own?” villagers have asked me since the beginning of my village days,

“Nah,” I always shake my head with fake bravery. I find it hard to explain that I go into the hills to actually lose my fears. 

I’ve got music playing in my ear buds, Kylie, “you look like fun to me, you look a little like somebody I know” I mouth along to the lyrics which I know off heart, my steps following the thumping beat. and I make my way through the path stretched out in front of me. The long grass at either side has yellowed, and in between are patches of purple, all covered with a golden haze from the setting sun.

Picture perfect.

I always pretend this particularly flat stretch of the walk is my cat walk, and I wonder what people would think if they’d see me, a pretend supermodel well past her sell by date, and I quickly dismiss that thought. There’s no one here.

I stretch out my arms, feeling the breeze on my bare skin.

I follow the path to where it eventually leads to an abandoned village and turn around. It will get dark soon. 

At that moment I spot an animal 30 metres or so in front of me on the path. It’s got its head down, a black sturdy body and my mind does a little flip flop.

A mountain deer? But they’re not black, it all goes quickly, as if scanning a matching image in my head. A boar? Negative. I’ve encountered those often enough.

At that moment it lifts its head as it’s spotted me and we stand there both as still as each other, locked in some strange make believe universe.

 Because my brain tells me very clearly this is not a boar or deer nor a dog. 

It is a black wolf.

I have my mobile in my hand and I could take a pic if I want, but I’m just standing there in awe, not wanting to disturb this moment, holding my breath.

It then disappears into the forest on its right.

That was terrifyingly magical.

Black wolves don’t exist here as far as I know.

Could it have been a dog? Months ago I thought I saw a wolf in this same area too, but I decided it must have been an alsatian type black dog. It was so brief at the time and I didn’t think much of it. I had turned back right away, not eager to have an encounter with a wild dog.

But this time. I saw it so clearly, and the way it moved, this wasn’t a dog.

It didn’t feel like a dog.

I’ve seen wolves before, once about 7 years ago, one scuttled out of the bushes across my path when I was running, breathtakingly close and once a mother with youngsters, but again, it all lasted seconds.

I message my daughter. “I think I’ve just seen a black wolf”

I know the brain can play tricks on you, and on my way back I keep replaying what I’ve just seen, and the feeling I’d just had.

I’ll ask Js son in law. He knows the woods too; he often takes J’s dog for a walk.

When I get to the village darkness is settling in. They’re no longer loading the wood at the edge of the forest, but I hear the clanging of wood in the trailer, they’re loading the wood into the shed underneath the house, where only a few months ago their cow used to live. They decided to get rid of it after J’s last stint in hospital, to his utter chagrin.

I walk through their spacious courtyard to the shed, call out, J’s daughter and son in law greet me.

“I think I’ve just seen a black wolf, ” I say, “Are there black wolves here?”

“You’ve probably seen a boar,” the son in law suggests.  I sign inwardly. Last week, when villager J’s dog had followed me into the hills, he’d ended up chasing a cat and refused to follow me back. When I recounted that fact, according to him it was a rabbit.  It was hard not to answer sarcastically “the first rabbit I’d seen climbing a tree,” 

“It wasn’t a boar,” I say. 

I go home none the wiser.

I trawl the net. There’s footage on youtube from what looks like a black wolf in Galicia, which gets my hopes up, but the comments below the video suggest it is a hybrid.  I ask the question in a Galician FB wolf protection group.

“No,” someone says

“Hybrid,” someone else says

And then;

“It is super rare, but it is possible.”

And that reaction makes me smile.

Of course it’s my confirmation bias at work, but I take it.

It’s possible.

I’ll go out again tomorrow.