The wolf in winter

In the language of biologists, they are "charismatic megafauna," the species that define a landscape and get the lion's share of attention in our parks and refuges. Wolves, bears, moose and eagles are not only wild creatures in the woods -- they are symbols of what we admire and sometimes fear about the wilderness. As the human population grows, questions about whether we want to live in a world with wolves and other wild animals become more urgent. Minnesota is one of the last places in the Lower 48 with an ecosystem that still includes big predators and game animals. In the state's remaining wild spaces, we are fortunate to be able to encounter, and learn about, our animal kingdom's star attractions.

Feather-light snow drifted out of the dusk, catching in pine needles and resting on the naked boughs of aspens alongside Fernberg Road.

The two-lane highway, not far from the Canadian border, was deserted, and I drove with the windows cracked so I could taste the sharp, clear air.

I saw some movement ahead, and I braked. As I came to a stop, a wolf jumped onto the far lip of the righthand ditch. Blood stained the snow where he had been feasting on a whitetail that apparently had been hit by a car.

A black outercoat tipped his gray fur. Running muscle defined his broad chest and shoulders. He looked me right in the eye. A moment passed. His eyes were gold. He turned and started jogging, parallel to the road on the periphery of the woods. I let the car keep pace, and 50 yards later, he veered into the trees. Again I stopped the car, this time to regain my bearings.

I'm not prone to equating animals with people, but when I looked at that wolf, there was someone formidable looking back at me.

Mythical beast

In 1963, the wolf population in the contiguous United States was estimated at between 360 and 710, all in Minnesota except for 10 on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. Today, there are more than 5,000 in the lower 48, about 3,000 of them in Minnesota. Their recovery is remarkable, especially considering that many people would just as soon see them dead.

That's a sentiment that can be understood when considering a rancher who's lost herd animals to predation. But wolves carry a stigma that goes far beyond the actual damage they inflict. From Red Riding Hood to the werewolf, these wild dogs loom large in the human psyche as malevolent and clever beasts, a symbol of the wild world we left behind when we put down bows and arrows and started building fences for livestock.

Because of Minnesota's durable wolf population, and because of an esteemed biologist named L. David Mech, the state is a world-renowned center for wolf research and education. In 1989, Mech founded the International Wolf Center, a nonprofit institute in Ely, Minn., dedicated to study, preservation and education. As part of its educational mission, the wolf center has a program of learning vacations that introduce people from around the world to the most famous inhabitants of Minnesota's North Woods.

"No, wolves don't eat little girls in red capes," said Jess Edberg, an instructor at the center. Edberg was welcoming me and 14 other students to a four-day "Wolves and Wilderness" program last February.

"They eat moose and deer, and for the most part, they eat moose and deer that are weak or sick."

Meet the pack

Edberg explained that we'd be alternating classroom lectures with observation and investigation in the field. We'd use radio telemetry to understand how biologists track pack movement and dynamics. We'd snowshoe into wolf territory, looking for tracks and scat. We'd go deeper into the woods by dogsled. And we'd observe the center's resident pack of four wolves in their two-acre enclosure; even though they don't hunt, they exhibit the same kinds of pack behavior and communication as wolves in the wild.

Edberg's introduction was delivered in the living room of a four-bedroom cabin at Timber Trail Lodge, a couple of miles north of Ely. All of us stayed at the lodge, and most of us occupied that big homey cabin, which became our headquarters and sometimes our classroom. We ended up exercising our own pack dynamics by sharing meals, living space and sock-drying territory.

The next morning, we gathered at the International Wolf Center's elegant wood-and-stone home to meet the star attractions of the class -- the resident wolf pack. A spacious classroom with stadium seating faced plate glass windows that opened onto the four wolves' enclosure.

Chris Williams, another instructor at the center, introduced us to the wolves, all of whom were raised in captivity.

Shadow, an Arctic white wolf, is the dominant male, he said. There are two other males and one female. "There's a hierarchy that determines who leads, who eats first," Williams said. "And those roles are reinforced in a variety of ways."

That was easily seen. The four wolves were active. One was gnawing on a deer's thigh bone and the other three were playfully jogging around. Shadow had a regal bearing -- posture erect, tail up, ears perked. When the other wolves approached him, they came forward as supplicants, with their heads and tails down, sometimes rolling over and offering their bellies to show that no aggression was intended.

Williams said the pack's organization helps it function efficiently in hunting and raising pups; the wolves work together to ensure the survival of the group.

The wolves at the center recognize staff members and accept their presence inside the enclosure, Williams said. But they are still wild animals, and extremely wary of strangers.

We had one chance to meet the wolves up close; Edberg said it would be brief to minimize the impact on the wolves. We left the building and approached them at a chain-link gate where staff members enter the enclosure. As we neared the fence, Shadow immediately moved to the front, with the hair on his neck and back bristling. The other wolves arrayed themselves behind him. Shadow reared back and let loose a howl that I felt in every cell of my body.

Instinctively, I knew what those plaintive, angry howls meant. If the fence hadn't been there, I would have been backing away very slowly. That was the second time that week that I'd been in the presence of a wolf and felt like I'd encountered a substantial being.

In wolf country

On the third day of the trip, we abandoned the warmth of the center for the snowy woods south of Ely for a day of dogsledding. With the commotion we'd be creating, there was no chance we'd see a wolf, but our instructors informed us that every domestic dog, from the smallest bug-eyed Chihuahua to the biggest polka-dotted Great Dane, is descended directly from canis lupus, the gray wolf. So in a way, learning to handle sled dogs was a logical extension of our canine studies.

Several of the students were dubious about being able to handle five or six energetic Alaskan huskies on their own. The owner of the dog-sledding company, White Wilderness, was Peter McClelland. A sturdy, bearded fellow who looks the part of a musher, he assured us that with just a little knowledge and a lot of trust in the dogs, we'd all be fine.

Worried that we would be abusing the animals, Marcia McGrann of Houston, Texas, asked if the dogs liked to run. McClelland replied, "I'll let the dogs answer that question."

As we put the animals into harness, they gave their reply. It was an ungodly racket of eager yips, barks and howls. Dogs jumped and strained at their chains. If the sleds hadn't been tied to posts that were anchored in the frozen ground, they would have left without us.

Getting dogs into harnesses takes time and energy; by the time we were ready to go, most of us had shed our heavy parkas to avoid working up a sweat. Finally, we departed the yard, one sled at a time. McClelland went first, knowing the other teams would obediently stay in single file behind his lead.

Unfortunately, the trail out of the dog yard was bumpy and icy. I sat in the basket of a sled driven by one of McClelland's assistants; we were the last to leave. As we passed through the first 200 yards of trail, we encountered several dazed, snow-covered mushing students stumbling around in the woods. They'd lost their balance and fallen off their sleds, and their dogs -- with passengers still seated in the baskets -- took off without them. Later, McGrann, who'd been a passenger, said she'd continued talking to her husband, Tom, for quite a while before realizing he was no longer behind her, driving the sled.

It took another hour to catch the errant sleds, reassure the fallen mushers, and get the whole caravan rolling again. But once we did, it was glorious -- a 20-degree, sparkling clear day, perfect for gliding across the snow behind a pack of joyful huskies. The barking of anxious dogs was replaced with the shushing sound of sliding runners and the steady patter of paws on packed snow. Midday, we built a bonfire on a frozen lake, ate hot dogs and cookies and drank hot chocolate.

Bob Sheedy, a house painter from Minneapolis, reveled in the experience. "A couple of days ago, thinking about dogsledding, I was scared [expletive]less. If I'd have known it was going to be this much fun, I wouldn't have been so scared."Every once in a while it's good to get scared to death," said his daughter Jane Sheedy. "It makes you feel more alive."

A cry in the wilderness

By the end of the trip, we'd learned a lot about pack dynamics, wolf biology and the way wolves support and balance the environment around them. But we hadn't lost our hunger to experience them in the wild. To that end, we set out to howl with wolves. Chris Williams told us that our odds of getting a reply from real wolves were about 50-50.

Well after dark on a bitterly cold night, we drove to nearby Fall Lake, stood on its frozen shore, and tried howling, following Williams' uninhibited lead. He told us to consider it "like singing in an Irish bar, but without the beer for courage."

Having heard Shadow, a virtual Pavarotti of the canine world, do his thing, I was pretty sure our discordant chorus wasn't very convincing.

The pine forest, the frozen lake and the vast field of stars above swallowed our piteous bellowing and returned a deep, engulfing silence. We waited, shifting from foot to foot in the bitter cold, wanting to hear an answer, but none came.

"They're out there somewhere," said Williams. "They could be out of range, or maybe they heard us and just didn't feel like answering."

We kept at it for a couple of hours, but never got a response. I thought of the wolf I saw by the road a couple of days earlier. He was out here somewhere, running on top of the snow with those broad, snowshoe-like paws, completely at ease in his element.

As we drove back to our warm cabins, someone asked Williams if he thought that the wolves at the center recognized their names, if they responded to them the way a pet dog does.

"Yeah, I think they do," he said. "If I say 'Shadow,' he'll look up. But he doesn't care. They don't need us or our affection. They'll accept it, but they don't need it. They're already complete."

CHRIS WELSCH • 612-673-7113

Chris Welsch • cwelsch@startribune.com