Reciprocity

No one knows all the motives for howling. We know howling is social, keeping the pack intact. We know wolves answer each other, echo locating over vast tracks. Howling attracks a scattered pack or a mate. Howling is long distance contact: a stroke for or against—a caress, a shove. Because all sound is vibration, we know the howl is a form of touch that overcomes distance. The air consolidates cravings as it trembles on your skin. Howl hurtles out of sublime vistas, out of fairy tales, out of the dark, out of your nowhere. Follow your thought or follow an animal path, a sonic thread out into the open. We know one howl can travel 140 miles. To hear it is to feel yourself heard by the wolf. A howl encircles, it saturates, and demarcates. We know and we don’t know: howl shapes the world.