Lone Wolves Read Online Free PDF

knocking over a salt shaker. The sharp sound startled the wolf, and he ran away.
    For the next half hour Denny busily worked on writing a new poem, wondering why the wolf was all alone.
    That evening, right on time, Sampson arrived on his snowmobile, the bright headlight glaring through the window. He shut off the engine, and darkness and quiet returned to the valley. As promised, Denny had a hot pot of tea on the wood stove. She poured him a cup when he sat down at the table after hanging his hat and parka on a hook.
    â€œThe trail was good,” he said, warming his hands around the cup. “I made it here in less than twenty minutes. Saw two moose on the way up.”
    Denny told her grandfather about the wolf she had seen out front pouncing on a little mouse.
    He laughed on hearing her description.
    â€œPeople always think wolves just eat moose and caribou, but a big part of their diet is small things like mice. It take lots of dluuni to fill a wolf belly.”
    â€œGrandpa,” said Deneena.
    The old man could tell from her tone that she had something serious to say.
    â€œAlmost all of the other kids at school drink all the time. They even smoke marijuana when they can get it. They always make fun of me when I don’t do it with them. I want to fit in. I want them to like me, but I want them to like me for me, for who I am.”
    Sampson peered out the small window into the darkness outside. Denny could tell he was thinking about what to say. Elders were like that, taking their time to say something. She waited.
    Finally he spoke.
    â€œWhat they do, what you do—it not a matter of legal or not legal; not even a matter of right or wrong. It about being true to yourself, about deciding your own path. People are like rivers, and the hours of our days flow to the sea. But no two rivers are the same, and no river is today what it was last month or last year. It always trying to find new channels, shifting in its gravel bed, hurling itself against boulders and trying to undercut steep banks. Some people are content to follow the course set before them. Life easy that way. Others, like you, jump their banks, daring to be different. Like rivers, people end up at the same place, but how we get there is what makes us who we are.”
    Denny nodded as if she understood. But she wondered if she was too young to understand what her grandfather was saying. Such knowledge, she thought, comes only from having lived a long life, from long awareness. She was only a girl, she thought as she nodded with a kind of dawning of understanding, the way geese flying above clouds and mountains must be vaguely aware that the world is round.
    The old man continued, slowly.
    â€œYou have to decide who you want to be and what will make you happy. There is nothing you must be. There is nothing you must do. And despite all them commercials on television, there is nothing you must have. If you ask me, finding your own happiness in a hard world is all that means anything. Happiness isn’t someplace else, and it don’t come from a new car or a big house or fancy clothes or computer games. That snowmobile outside don’t make me happy, but at my age, it gets me into the woods, which makes my life worth living. Having lots of money and things can’t make you happy. It comes from here ,” he said, thumping his fist against his chest.
    Denny scooted out from her chair and hugged him around his neck for a long time.
    â€œ Tsin’aen ,” she whispered and kissed him on his coarse cheek. “Thank you, Grandpa.”

    That night, after Sampson left on the snowmobile for the village, Denny thought about what he had said earlier in the week about how wolves sometimes go hungry, and how that hunger forces them to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. She kept thinking about the lone wolf hunting little dluuni , such a small meal for a wolf. After a while, she got up and threw one of her rabbits out in