Alone with a she-wolf

The Canadian High Arctic’s Ellesmere Island—Umingmak Nuna, or “land of muskoxen” in Inuktitut—is a realm of staggering extremity: an expanse approximating the area of Great Britain, yet inhabited by a mere 150 permanent residents and roughly 200 wolves, most of the landmass lying north of the geomagnetic North Pole and entirely above the Northwest Passage. Here, average annual temperatures hover at a forbidding -16°C, with historic plunges to -56.2°C; the environment’s austerity is such that a cup of coffee, once thrown, crystallizes before contacting the ground. The island’s harshness is matched by its isolation and the precariousness of human presence, underscored by the forced relocation in the 1950s of Inuit families to Grise Fiord (Aujuittuq, “the place that never thaws”) as a geopolitical assertion of Canadian sovereignty. My own arrival in 2004, undertaken in conjunction with research for The Long Exile, coincided with the early encroachments of anthropogenic climate disruption—seasonal ice thinner, fragile, retreating sooner each year.

The sparse settlement of Grise Fiord, principally populated by Inuit residents, is intermittently punctuated by the comings and goings of polar researchers and even rarer outsiders. My stay was marked by the generosity and practical wisdom of a local family, who, with gentle humor at my naïveté, outfitted my unseasoned self in sealskin mitts, a down parka, and the company of an Inuit guide. This initial period of shelter and acclimatization gave way to solitude as, with the brief summer’s warmth, the community dispersed to hunting and fishing camps, leaving behind a handful of non-Inuit inhabitants. It was a temporary isolation that, compounded by the abrupt departure of a companion, precipitated a decision—rooted both in youthful impulsivity and the unconscious residue of unresolved trauma—to venture alone into the tundra, accompanied only by scant provisions and borrowed garments.

Such a foray into the austere hinterland was, even in retrospect, an act of considerable imprudence. Days prior, my guide—armed, knowledgeable, and vigilant—had navigated us safely away from polar bear sightings and muskox charges, reminding me how alien and precarious my own presence was in this territory. The terrain itself was treacherous: an undulating mosaic of ankle-twisting scree, permafrost crust, and crevasses obscured beneath ephemeral snow. Without reliable communications or navigational aid—compasses falter this close to the magnetic pole—I understood the risks yet proceeded nevertheless, propelled by a compulsion I recognize now as Freudian repetition: a subconscious drive to test the boundaries of my own survivability.

My chosen path, following a minor waterway westward, offered at least the illusion of orientation, a slender thread of rational strategy in an otherwise irrational act. The journey itself was grueling: in the lee of rocks, ice clung implacably; elsewhere, the exposed tundra was reduced to a sodden, hummocky quagmire beneath the relentless midnight sun. This exertion, culminating at a gravelly riverside promontory where I paused to dine, was swiftly followed by an overwhelming fatigue that yielded to sleep—an interlude abruptly interrupted by the specter of a white wolf, standing ten feet distant, her cub trailing behind, a pair of ravens as silent observers. This subspecies, endemic to Ellesmere, lives unmolested by human predation and consequently evinces no fear of humans, though attacks, while uncommon, are not unheard of.

The encounter with the wolf was marked not by the epiphany or interspecies communion one might mythologize, but rather by a visceral apprehension of mutual vulnerability. The animal before me was gaunt, her coat matted and unkempt, a creature as threadbare and exposed as I myself felt in that moment. Time dilated; adrenaline tempered, but did not annul, the primal awareness of peril. Here was no narrative of discovery or wisdom, but the unadorned realization that I was but one constituent in a vast, indifferent ecosystem—no more significant than the river, the tundra, or the wolf herself. The responsibility for my predicament and the agency required to persevere were mine alone, a confrontation with the unadorned reality of human finitude and the existential necessity of self-reliance.

As a practitioner of psychotherapy, I am accustomed to engaging with individuals attempting to distill meaning from chaos, to impose reason upon the irrational surges of emotion—grief that resists consolation, despondency unrelieved by logic. The interplay between affect and rationality is complex: feelings, though refractory to syllogism and calculation, are neither meaningless nor irrational; rather, they are the complex, incarnate responses to the biosocial, psychological, and spiritual environments in which we exist and subsist. Therapy, in part, serves to render these reactions legible, to assign coherence to the seemingly incoherent, and to recalibrate the emotional landscape in ways consonant with personal values and existential aspirations.

The philosophy of existentialism frames the human condition as inherently absurd, a struggle to impose meaning upon a universe that offers none. Camus, in his allegory of Sisyphus, locates in the very futility of the endeavor a kind of liberation—not in meaninglessness, but in the struggle itself. Sartre’s concept of “bad faith” describes the seduction of living as if one’s circumstances preclude genuine agency, when, in fact, we remain, as Frankl observed, always free to choose our attitude, our posture toward the vicissitudes of fate.

Years hence, the recollection of that wolf and her cub, doubtlessly perished, remains potent. Reflecting upon what did and what might have transpired has afforded me an understanding of what Kundera termed “the unbearable lightness of being”—simultaneously the liberation inherent in transience and the gravity of living with intentionality. In clinical practice, I am daily witness to the courage with which individuals confront their own precariousness, the metaphorical rocks they weigh in their hands, the parts of self they must slay or be slain by. The responsibility of constructing meaning from the detritus of the past and the ambiguity of the future is, in its difficulty, analogous to traversing Ellesmere’s hummocky bogs and crevasses. Yet, in embracing this challenge, one accesses both the profound vulnerability and the latent spaciousness of the human condition, wherein the possibility of authentic, liberatory movement begins.

WORDS TO BE NOTED- 

1. Extremity – a very harsh or severe condition

2. Forbidding – unfriendly or threatening

3. Precariousness – being unsafe or uncertain

4. Anthropogenic – caused by human activity

5. Naïveté – lack of experience or wisdom

6. Imprudence – lack of good judgment

7. Crevasses – deep cracks, especially in ice

8. Subconscious – not fully aware; below conscious thought

9. Encounter – a meeting, especially an unexpected one

10. Vulnerability – being open to emotional or physical harm

11. Finitude – having limits; not infinite

12. Existential – relating to existence or the meaning of life

13. Resilience – ability to recover quickly from difficulties

14. Detritus – waste or debris

15. Liberatory – bringing freedom or release

Paragraph Summary -

The passage describes a visit to remote Ellesmere Island in the Arctic, where the writer—a psychotherapist and author—traveled alone in a very dangerous place. Despite knowing the risks of wild animals, bad weather, and difficult terrain, she made the risky decision to walk out onto the tundra by herself. She fell asleep by a river and woke to find a white wolf and her cub watching her. The writer felt very afraid but also realized how small and unimportant humans are in nature. She later understood that her risky behavior was partly due to past trauma and a need to prove she could survive. The experience made her think about how people try to find meaning in difficult situations. In her therapy work, she sees many people struggling to make sense of their lives, bravely facing hardships, and trying to live with purpose and honesty. The memory of the wolf’s vulnerability and strength stayed with her, reminding her of life’s fragility and importance.

SOURCE- PSYCHE 

WORDS COUNT- 550

F.K SCORE -13