I felt as though the night was being enveloped in some nocturnal operatic orchestration as one fine note rose from the distant darkness, and danced with the silence around it. I stood in the shadows of a poplar tree, staring up at the moon hovering over the mountains behind my house with wide eyes in disbelief as the undulating tone waned. Then, off in the distance along the ridge an answer; undulating in a similar rhythm but with different tones. What were they saying to each other? Regardless of what they were saying, their chorus penetrated all that was human in my body, and communicated a well of meaning I cannot begin to sound.
I heard wolves last night in Pennsylvania. I was not way up north in Potter or Tioga county, I was in York county, near one of the southernmost cities of the state, yet I heard wolves speaking across a ridge in the middle of the night under bright moonlight. I have no doubt about this, any of you out there who have heard wolves before may agree; there are few things so primal to be heard as the cry of a wolf. There are few sounds so pure that can wash away your humanity, raise the hair on your neck, erase all that surrounds you, and leave a single note resonating within your chest.
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