Howling with wolves

The enigma of being human is richer and more poignant when we share it with other life forms in our great family, which is why Baptiste Morizot goes out at night to converse with a pack of wolves

A wolf’s howl pierces the night (Shutterstock)

It’s the first day of winter. We set out quite late in the sunshine, feeling as heavy as at the beginning of the season, not yet sharpened by the snow, not yet woven by the white winds. The reason we’re here in the South Vercors is that we’ve had some information, heard rumours: certain clues seem to indicate that wolves have settled here, and that they may have reproduced. Has a new pack been born, inventing its territory along these familiar paths?

We advance awkwardly along a small trail of snow piled up at the side by the passage of snowshoes, heading north. A fat moon creates sharp outlines, clouds and horizons as clear as a print, as if a Japanese painter were refining the line of trees behind us with a calligraphy brush as soon as we turn our backs.

And this is when it pierces the night. A perfect wolf howl, right next to us. We stand still as if struck by lightning, each pulls off his companion’s cap, we grab each other by the shoulders. Then, a wide-open silence, like when you wait for the response at Mass. So I answer. I howl the way I’ve learned to, to match the attitude, the shape, the particular curl of their native tongue. I mime it as best I can, like a mediaeval traveller on his way to the Levant who has learned to pronounce by heart a phrase of diplomatic greeting in the language of the mythical people of the Cynocephali, those wild humans with dogs’ heads reputed to inhabit the great steppes north of Lake Baikal, as told in Marco Polo’s Book of The Marvels of the World. But without understanding a single word of it.