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philosophizing about it is not such a base instinct. I want to make sense of creatures, at once exotic and kin, and as I try to interpret their presence against the backdrop of my own existence, it’s a very short leap to the owl as talisman, elk a stately messenger from a wilder world. I am more eager to see what an animal means to me than what it means to itself.
    Why do we do this? (Don’t you do it too?) I have some hunches, about power and connection and disappointment, about the margins of ego, and the urge to idolize. Short heroes of our own kind, it’s no wonder we build pedestals for bears. But if I push past the initial urge to codify, or else, to ooh and aah , if I force myself to watch without judgment, philosophy soon falls away, the meaning of the animal quashed by the actual animal, moving, through the same world as me. Wait. The same world? Well, that’s frightening, isn’t it? Me and a grizzly bear, in the same exact world?
    Which brings us to danger. Part of what fascinates me about wild animals is the element of threat, not because they are bloodthirsty or even necessarily predators, but because their actions are not about me. My wolf-faced dogs share the social contract of domesticity—I trust they will not hurt me, and they look to me for food, exercise, companionship. With animals I do not feed or sleep beside, there is not trust. I am curious about them, I can guess how they will behave based on other experiences, or what I’ve read, but I do not know, despite my field guides, what their priorities are, what they aim to do, and when. A grizzly could maul me if I stepped between it and a carcass. A moose might charge if I skied past its calf in the alders. A fisher could bite my leg if I sat too long in the outhouse it has made its winter home.
    The specter of danger mingled with curiosity results in an otherness that both beckons and warns. This potent blend leaves me off-balance, invigorated, and by necessity, returns me to watching. To feel as safe as possible in situations I cannot predict among company I don’t control, I have to trust my senses and read signs. A congress of ravens circled and hollering might indicate a fresh kill nearby. A calf prompts a look for its mother. On a brushy creek, I scan for fresh bear prints in sand. Evolutionary lessons ring true: keep eyes open, nose pointed into the wind. Notice everything.
    There’s a funny thing about connection, though. I say it’s the animals I’m drawn toward, but these sightings usually bring me closer to humans, whether the crew mate in my arms or the hiker we tell later on the trail, Watch close for you’ll never guess what we how cool was that. The bond over animals is one of the strongest I have with particular friends; stories about the fox that stood for minutes on a creek bed watching fish, and how the Sandhill cranes seem early this year. We ask questions: This feather frozen in ice, do you know what kind? We point and wonder: How’d that get there, a Dall sheep skull on a gravel bar, half-filled with sand?
    The Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz wrote, “We’re separated from nature as if by a glass wall. . . . We are akin to it and yet we are alienated by our consciousness—our curse and our blessing.” But, Milosz, we are nature. Don’t you see? Still, he’s on to something, the egocentric positioning that lets us fool ourselves. Sharing space with wild creatures stirs me (blessing), and as soon as I’ve said “stirs me,” I cringe (curse). Sheepish or not, proximity to wild things makes me feel feral—incautious and frisky and willing to gamble on what I cannot prove. And proximity to wild things makes me feel tame—glad I don’t have to hunt for every meal, eager to hunker next to a fire on a cold night. Wherever I am, banging against the glass.
    Some mornings when I crawl out of my tent to a bright sky and stretch the kinks out of my back