WOLF!

I awoke quite early on the 1st of August as I would have a long drive (600 miles) home and I wanted to get to bed early as I had to be to work at 8am Monday. What a reality check! Going from not a sound except for the shuffling of my feet and an occasional loon call to all out chaos of 5 ringing phone lines, drive thru buzzers, overhead music and the like within 26 hours would be an adjustment I would need to ease in to. I had a wonderful breakfast at Tamarack (and picked up a few of their gigantic homemade cinnamon rolls for Monday's breakfast....hey...it would help me adjust back to the real world better if I had a lot of sugar to pep me up!) and left Copper Harbor about 7:30. Not quite ready for the noise of a radio yet, I quietly reflected on my trip...there was no one else on the road...I was entitled to daydream. I did pay close attention to the sides of the road, however, being alert to moose (yikes) and deer. Soon an ambulance (no lights or anything) caught up to me and was patient enough to keep going slowly in the early morning haze. Perhaps a good thing just in case I did encounter a moose... As I was driving I decided it was a great time to talk to God...thanking him for the usual (place to live, food to eat, clean water to drink, air to breathe, friends and family, pets, flowers, etc) and told him that even though I was a little disappointed that I didn't see a moose or especially a wolf on Isle Royale that it was ok...I would come back to Isle Royale and maybe, just maybe he could allow me to see one then. Truth be told, I had seen several moose up close before, but what I really wanted more than anything on this trip was to see a wolf. Honest to God, this sentence hadn't rolled off my lips more than 1 minute when out from the woods on the passenger side strolled out a gray wolf no more than 100 feet ahead of me, crossed the road then disappeared into the woods on the opposite side! It looked straight ahead never even seeming to notice me! The whole scenario lasted only a few seconds, as soon as I tapped my brakes he had passed so a Durango/wolf accident (thankfully) wasn't in his cards today. I looked in my rear view at the ambulance....I really don't think he even noticed! As goosebumps arose all over my body I got sort of misty-eyed and thanked God profusely for letting me have that special moment with the wolf. I didn't see any others following him and was quite glad that I had been driving slow so that I did get to see him (or her) and didn't squash him either! It was gray colored and was a little bigger than the size of a large husky that had just had a haircut. I didn't see its eyes as it was looking straight ahead focused on something...and to tell you the truth it all happened so fast that even if it would have looked at me....such detail would have probably been lost. I was so pumped up about the sighting that 1/2 hour later as I was fueling up at a gas station out of Houghton, I told an older man about my experience. "Yep, we've got a few of those up here", he replied. Apparently he had seen lots or really didn't care much about them. He didn't put a damper on my spirit though...I kept smiling all 600 miles home!