Keeping the Wolves at Bay
Thriving and Surviving on the North Shore of Lake Superior
Jan 25, 2025
When I moved to the North Shore of Lake Superior seven years ago, 18 miles from the Canadian border, there was a steep learning curve. In the city, firewood was uncommon, in fact, some communities prohibited wood burning fires. Propane gas was the norm. Here in the Northland, wood burning stoves and fireplaces are a necessity.
In the past two weeks, when temperatures dropped to a deathly thirty below (before windchill), our water line froze and our propane boiler died. Fortunately, we have a secondary electric boiler — but a tree falling on a powerline had knocked out power to homes nearby. We still had power — but that didn’t mean we would by nightfall. We stoked up the fire just in case.
The first Fall I lived here, I found a nice running/walking loop for my dog, Odie and I to get enough exercise for him (a German Shorthair Pointer - notoriously high energy hunting dogs) to be a good citizen in the house. It was tucked back on dirt roads that were lined by deep forest - pine and birch and aspen with thick underbrush. It was late October, and there had been an early snowfall, just a few inches, but enough to signal to deer (and their predators the wolves) that they should move grazing grounds out of the hills and down toward the shore. They could still nibble on grass closer to the shore, but inland, the snow was deeper.
I heard the pack howling along the ridge as I ran up a hill at the far end of my loop. I was two and a half miles in and would need to turn around and run an equal distance back to the house. Odie ran ahead of me, off leash, often exploring into the woods before turning back to me. The sound of the howling pack followed us. They did not want us here — or, more to the point, my dog. At one point, I glimpsed the pack high on the rocky ridge. They were likely headed down to Horseshoe Bay, where they often chased deer onto the rocky shoreline for a kill. I leashed Odie up and turned back, away from the pack’s howls and yips, and though shaking, felt a rush of relief as their bays retreated in the distance.
Being aware — staying vigilant — of my surroundings was something I’d learned as a kid in a family with an often impulsive and violent brother who (I later learned) was bipolar, but never treated. I took that training with me every time I hit the trails. I use that training as a writer, too. Pay attention, I tell myself. This is important.
A few weeks later, I encountered a lone wolf. She popped out onto the road from the underbrush and stared at us from fifty feet away. I’d taken to carrying a whistle at that point and blew shrilly in her direction. She dashed back into the woods and Odie (now leashed) and I headed toward home, uneasily crossing over the place on the road where she had stood. I’d heard that lone wolves were often older females, no longer useful to the pack for breeding and chased out and replaced by a younger she-wolf. I felt an affinity for her.
In my work-in-progress, a novel about an older woman moving to the North Shore after her husband’s death, I use this experience to illustrate my protagonist’s realization that she too, has become unnecessary to her pack. Her children are grown and busy building their careers and communities. Her husband is dead. Her friends are getting sick and dying. What will Violet do? How will she retain her relevance? This is something I consider every day as I sit down to write. Writing my way out of the forest and into the clearing. Looking for a way to save Violet, and perhaps myself.
