My visit to Mission Wolf was from the beginning of September to the beginning of December 2007, this was my second visit to the refuge but this time my visit was quite a bit longer. I hope you enjoy the read and I hope this will give you an insight into life at Mission:Wolf.
It took about 2 or 3 weeks for me to find my feet and have a fair idea of how everything works and relationships to build.
The number of volunteers at Mission:Wolf would vary, on occasion there would be around 15 people, other times just 5 or 6 and a constant flow of people staying for one or two nights especially in the summer, x-volunteers and friends of mission:wolf would stay for a few days.
Tepee life
Living in a Tepee is a fantastic experience. My Tepee, which you can see from the picture, had a double bed, couch, stove, storage units and carpet, although not your deep pile variety it was quite the luxury! After living in it for a month, I finally decided to re-organise the place, what I didn’t envisage was the new position of the couch meant that when it snowed the couch became caked in snow, but unlike the excuse for snow we get in the UK, it was just a case of brushing it off with my broom every morning.
Living in a Tepee in the summer there was simply nothing to it, just a bed to sleep on and a place to keep your stuff. The winter was a different story, a lot more planning ahead was involved. Below I’ve described a typical day of living in a Tepee.
Tepee diaries
Wake up at never-sure-what-time o’clock (never had a watch) the wolves would usually let me know with a howling session. Start to think about emerging out of my cosy warm sleeping bag, check my au-natural barometer (the base of the small triangular opening at the door of my Tepee which formed the top of my makeshift door), if it had snow on it, that meant it had been snowing, no light appearing through it, this could mean two things one, it was still nightime or two very thick snow (ingenious!!). Another sign that it had snowed in the night would be my stove would have a couple of inches of snow on top of it, this, however, wasn’t as reliable as my barometer as it would depend on the quality of my fire the night before as to whether the snow had landed and melted or not.
Eventually brace myself to unzip my sleeping bag with the knowledge that once started there was no going back when all the cold air rushes in. Leap out of bed, curse myself for leaving my previous days clothes inside out, resulting in precious cold seconds wasted, get dressed at the speed of light, and leave Tepee, this would often mean burrowing my way up and out if I was snowed in, walk very quickly to the bathroom in the new building.
Put some water on for tea and have my traditional cinnamon and raisin bagel, if not snowing sit on step outside with mug of tea and a cigarette and admire the view, which I forced myself not to take for granted, (not through the possibility of the distant mountains one day collapsing, more that I was going to come home at some point). If it was snowing then first priority would be to sweep the flagstone paths of snow before anyone trod on them, a couple of girls from Manchester learnt this the hard way!!
Walk back to Tepee, make bed, grab broom and sweep out Tepee of ashes from the night before.
It didn’t take me long to realise that one must be motivated enough to collect firewood during the day when it’s light and there is half the chance of allowing it to dry out before attempting to burn it as it was a real chore to get wood at night as you could only carry enough to last one night. There are various wood piles around the refuge which supplied different buildings. I received a valuable tip quite early on that the wood by the visitors centre (known as the VC) was the best wood to burn as it was last years stock, eventually my wood collecting system was faultless and I would have a good stock in my Tepee to last at least 5 days. I could never shake the feeling of stealing whenever I was collecting wood, until the time came when our trusted wood chopper John left the refuge for a month or so, and everyone had to chip in (excuse the pun), get the chain saws and log splitters out and cut the wood ourselves, albeit with the help of a college class we had staying with us at the time. My memory of this job was using the motorised wheel barrow to transport the wood 100 yards, dumping it and then having Rachael jump in the barrow and recklessly driving her back to the pile, there was always an element of fun no matter what the task. Another element of planning ahead was collecting free newspapers from the supermarket to make fire, oh how that made life easier, old magazines just don’t burn as well!
If I could be bothered, I would light my fire before dinner to get the Tepee warm for the sometimes quiet evenings I spent in there, with the intention of reading or sorting out my messy cupboards, but these evenings usually ended up literally sitting and watching my fire and seeing how many logs I could fit in at once or if I had guests for the evening it was a welcome task.
At the end of the evening, when I simply couldn’t watch my fire any longer without falling asleep into it, I would blow out ALL the candles and oil lamps (this would take quite some as I had a lot of candles) then put thermals on a slip into my sleeping bag, I would pretty often have to then get out of bed to reach across to the stove to get the metal door closing device (of unknown origin) so that I could stare at my fire from my sleeping bag and close the latch just before I went to sleep. Pretty often during the night nature called, but I would rather not disclose preventative measures I had in place against going out in the cold to the bathroom.
Daily feed
Every morning at around 0930 the wolves would be fed a hot meal of partially cooked (to obliterate any bugs) meat and kibble, two teams of 2, one for the upper wolves and one for the lower wolves (geographically speaking as opposed to wolf class!) would go round with 2 small saucepans and a bucket of food and deliver the meal, together with various homeopathic medicines. Various methods of delivering the food were dependant on the set up of the enclosures. Some would have buckets attached to wire lines that are lowered into the pens containing 2 wolves, some would have what we called feeding slots which were basically metal letter boxes attached to the fence with a dish attached to wire that can be delivered through the letter box and some would require separating the 2 wolves from each other via guillotine gates and tempting the wolves with food the encourage them into their respective compartments, this last method was gradually being fazed out in preference to the feeding slots. The procedure usually took around half an hour, there were a couple of unique methods of delivering food to some wolves, for instance Merlin (a 12 year old black male wolf would require one person to throw a tempting piece of meat over the fence while the other opens the guillotine, put the bowl down and shut the guillotine in one swift motion before he got wind of what was happening, this required good team work. Others were Kawh and Tierra’s enclosure, Kawh’s favourite past-time was trying to eat the metal bowl through the letter box, again tactics were in place to encourage both of them down the hillside away from their feeding slots whilst the other person discreetly removed the bowls. Once you knew all these little intricacies you simply got on with it in a very matter of fact way.
Big Feed
Each Wednesday and Saturday, following daily feed, the wolves had what we call big feed, which more volunteers got involved in and any other unsuspecting visitor. Large bones, offal and various other parts of anatomy from deer or horse are divided up into labelled buckets for each pen then the food was distributed by throwing it over the very high fences, this required effective throwing skills. On occasion we would have the delightful job of carving up either a roadkill deer or a horse donated to us, this would be done on a large tripod with a chain pully system so the animal would be completely off the ground, it was exhausting work, but the wolves appreciated it.
Projects
I had a number of projects that I worked on during my stay, these involved, sanding and staining the new pagoda erected by Dave (refuge manager) and Charles (French volunteer) just before my arrival.
I also sanded, varnished and put together a very large bed which I later learned was going to be Kent’s (refuge founder and owner) bed at the farm, I hope it hasn’t broken in two!!
Other work included, putting up metal sides to the horse barn at the bottom of the hill (for old resident horses seeing out their days until the inevitable happened!).
One of the main projects I worked on was diamond sanding a concrete countertop in the new building using just a basic grinder with diamond sanding sheets of various grades and water, once I was down to the finest grade the result was the equivalent to a granite worktop, sounds very simple……it wasn’t, it took me a month to complete due to various parts of the machinery breaking down, which I could go into great detail, but fear for your boredom levels.
With each project we did, I always managed to find an element of fun, even with the most laborious of tasks, this could even be a simple as the music I was listening to at the time or just the banter with other volunteers I was working with.
Town run
Generally on a Wednesday and Friday, two people would take down a list of supplies and drive to Westcliffe town (45 minute drive), this was sometimes a welcome event, especially if you hadn’t left the refuge for a few weeks.
Trash run
Taking the trash to the Westcliffe refuse site (which, may I add, had a bed and breakfast facility, nobody knew why!) This was an equally welcome event and quite a satisfying one bar the various maggots that had decided to inhabit the bins liners!
Night life
Nightlife varied at Mission Wolf, and could be anything from playing cards after dinner, watching movies in Dave’s 5 star Tepee (seriously, he really had done the place out well) to having guests in my Tepee to watch my fire with me. Towards the end of my stay we had a volunteer called Pat stay, together with an x-volunteer Mathias, both were masters at the guitar and we would quite often have nights of singing, laughing and listening to them mimic any tune I played on my iPod.
Relationships with the wolves
After a time there you certainly build up relationships with each of the wolves. Almost every day, Kent would take us in to see either Maggie and Abraham (Ambassador wolves), Sabretooth, Skinny and Rami to say hello, this was also an opportunity to have meetings on the tasks ahead. On entering their pens, there is certain protocol one must follow, firstly to ignore them, then sit down fairly quickly, if you are lucky enough to have one of them approach you, the usual stance would be to open your mouth and make sure they can lick your teeth and to give them eye contact and plenty of stroking, it is Kent’s belief (and I wasn’t going to argue, he been doing this a lot longer than me) that if you were to push the wolf away and completely ignore it, he found that you would get one of two reactions, one would be they would try harder and end up jumping all over you and to have a 90lb wolf on top of you is not funny or they would go the other way and act like upset child who has just had a potential cuddle rejected from their mum. Having said this you still needed to be in control of the situation, for instance, if you pulled back from the wolf and kept your mouth shut and shut your eyes, they were likely ‘nose butt’ your mouth leading to a cut lip, you had to keep your head forward arms out to their neck and eyes open.
The wolves would howl at different times during the day depending on what was going on, I could eventually distinguish between each howl, Selway for instance would always make sure she had the last word. They would howl when Kent arrived in the morning, generally after daily feed. What I found very sad but incredibly spiritual and emotional would be over the death of another wolf, I unfortunately experienced quite a lot of deaths during my time there, as most of the wolves were old. You would hear them howl in the middle of the night, which was very unusual and could be a sign of a death amongst them. Also during the burial service which took place on the neighbouring mountain, which was quite a distance from the refuge, they would howl as we were filling in the grave, I can’t explain the effect that has on a person, and even when writing this I’m full of emotion.
Community living
Living in a very close community I found quite interesting, it was real character building material, typically what I found most interesting was the periods with which the group would go through, this cycle would repeat itself whenever somebody new arrived. At the risk of getting a little psychological, the first stage is where the group gets to know each other, then there would always be a storming period which wasn’t very pleasant as conflicts occur, different members of the group will annoy other members with particular habits, eventually these differences were resolved and the group then come together, once at this stage the group can then be at their most productive. We had a rota system of general domestic duties which each member signs up to each week, these duties would include, cooking (one or two people cook each night for the group), cleaning, recycling, trash, sweeping paths etc. This system worked very well.
If you would like to know more about mission wolf or for information of the wolves I have mentioned in this article, please visit www.missionwolf.com