Whispers From the Wild An Invitation

By Susan B. Eirich, Ph.D.

Founded in 2000, Earthfire Institute is a sanctuary for rescued wildlife native to the Yellowstone to Yukon Wildlife Corridor. Living with these wild animals over their lifetimes, founder and Executive Director Susan B. Eirich, Ph.D. vividly illuminates the incredible connection of these animals to each other and to the humans who care for them. Through inspirational storytelling, Susan shares her experiences with these animals, in play, in love, and through their passing. From a wolf who maneuvered her way into cabin-living, to a developmentally delayed bear who deeply moved all who met him, these are the stories of the animals of Earthfire–a taste of the laughter, joy and love they brought, and the insights they offered.

Filled with hundreds of stunning color photographs and exclusive artwork, Whispers from the Wild is an immersive experience into the world of wild animals.

"These stories are rememberings of what humans and the other living beings who came before us once knew, that we share this gift of Earth and life, and that we must care for each other. They are moments of realization, efforts toward listening and speaking in ways we have all inherited yet forgotten, turned away from. They are connections between hearts and minds and voices across the divisions that "civilization" has imposed on our imaginations of what is real, human and animal. They are stories of loving, of being loved, and they open us to what is necessary at this crucial time."

—Stan Rushworth, author of Going to Water: The Journal of Beginning Rain; Diaspora's Children; and co-editor with Dahr Jamail of We Are The Middle Of Forever: Indigenous Voices From Turtle Island On The Changing Earth

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan B. Eirich, Ph.D.
• Release date: Dec 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223911098

Book preview

The Backstory

All things share the same breath—the beasts, the tree, the man, the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.

–Chief Seattle

Prologue

I was speeding down Highway 80 in Wyoming with a bawling young grizzly bear and three howling baby wolves in the back seat when the phone rang. It was my partner, Jean, in Idaho, sounding panicked. The neighbors are shooting at me—can you hear the shots? I just wanted you to know in case something happened to me...

Teton Totem, the bear cub, wanted out, out, out of his travel cage and it looked like he was going to succeed. It was rocking back and forth furiously. The young wolves were also scrabbling to get out. They needed cleaning and wanted their bottles now. I had several more hours of driving to go. What to do? I was alone, and it’s not good to drive with a rambunctious bear cub loose in the car. Do I drive through the night and risk an accident from fatigue, or find a place to sleep that would be off the beaten path in the woods somewhere and hope that the boxes will hold. I became more and more tired. I saw a dirt road on my left and made a split-second decision to follow it off the highway and pulled into a dense grove of trees. After feeding and cleaning the demanding and frazzled creatures, I being one of them, I settled down to a few fitful hours of sleep in the front seat of the car. Having made it through the night I fed and cleaned the increasingly restless animals and wearily faced another five hundred miles to bring them to my land in Colorado, and safety.

State government officials, after giving Jean permission to bring them into Idaho, had now changed their minds and threatened to seize and euthanize the animals. One day, shortly after I had arrived for a visit, two officers walked up the long driveway, their guns on their hips. Luckily, a quick-witted volunteer saw them coming and sensed trouble. While Jean talked with the officials, he quickly put Teton Totem inside a travel cage and carried him deep into the woods. Left alone, he immediately started bawling. Fortunately, the officers thought it was the bawl of a sick cow.

I had been visiting Jean in Idaho at the time. With the unexpected threat from Idaho’s Fish and Game department, I offered to take Teton Totem and the wolf pups back with me to my place in Colorado where I had animal enclosures and a barn. There they could be safely hidden while we fought to regain legal permission to allow the animals into Idaho. I was working full-time in a super-maximum prison as a psychologist and had to rush home every day during lunchtime to feed the animals and take them for walks. My supervisor wanted to know why I, usually so reliable, was suddenly taking overtime lunches. I didn’t dare tell her.

The neighbors were shooting at Jean because they didn’t want wolves and other wild animals nearby. In Idaho, most of the animals Jean wanted to bring in are reviled, persecuted, poisoned, trapped or shot. Once he had obtained the legal permits to provide shelter for them, despite all the local efforts to the contrary, the neighbors resorted to violence to force us out. They also defecated by our entry gate; circulated petitions against us throughout their church and from house to house; had Jean’s reputation investigated in other states; forced seven separate hearings requiring seven twenty-eight-hour round trips for us to attend; went on TV with babies in their arms to suggest the wolves would escape to eat them, then shot at me as well when I arrived on the land. The sheriff laughed at our concerns and said there was nothing he could do to stop them. They shot our beautiful, loving Belgian Malinois through the heart just before Christmas and called us to pick up his body.

Then politics intervened and the state reneged on permission to accommodate wild animals on our property.

While I was still living in Colorado and trying to find funds to purchase the property that would become Earthfire, an image came to me, unbidden, of two great whorls of energy swirling over the land—one of destructive forces and one of creative forces, and that somehow, just where the two whorls met, there was a momentary opening where we could slip through to the land below. I had no idea then of the barrage of negative forces arraigned against us. There were conservative politics; county and state governmental agencies hostile to bringing wild animals into the state; and irrational, enduring hatred of bears, wolves, and other wildlife rampant within the ranching community. I also had no idea of the generosity and kindness I would find.

Author’s Note

We humans are in a time between stories, exploring a new way of relating to wildlife and nature. My wish for this book, long in the making, is to contribute to a new paradigm where we viscerally feel the truth that we are all connected. Then we and our Earth can begin to heal.

The wild ones have the ability to open us to an enchanted world of unexpected depths, delights, and mutual exchange. We are surrounded by unimagined wonders, ready to fill our loneliness and enrich our lives. We just have to learn how to tune in to them. Our roots are in nature. It is from there that we draw deep sustenance. Any aspect of nature will work, but for many of us animals are the easiest portal into the mystery and miracle of Life.

The following stories illustrate the individuality and the many dimensions of wild animals—their playfulness, intelligence, and ecstatic joy in being alive. I hope they help you feel ever more a part of the rich web of living beings as they did for me—a magical world where, as we walk through forests and fields, we realize that everything around us is alive, resonating, in harmony with itself, us, and something vastly larger. My hope is that these stories give you a sense of the deep companionship that is available to us when we realize who the animals actually are—vivid, intelligent fellow beings sharing our Earth.

How do we find our way to each other?

Note: The animals in these stories live at Earthfire Institute Wildlife Sanctuary and Retreat Center, just west of Grand Teton National Park in Idaho. All of the stories in this book are factual, and have been reported as they were experienced by me over the last thirty years. From these same facts you may come up with different interpretations than I have. I invite you to join me; to share your own interpretations about what is told here and share your own stories as well. I will be happy to hear from you.

Introduction

Each living being is a unique presence, a treasure waiting to be discovered by us. Nature is really like a glorious fairytale. It has its terrors and tragedies, along with exquisite beauty and joy, but overall it is like living in a wonderland...only it is real.

The Northern Lights are shimmering, lighting the heavens with a pulsing glow of unearthly beauty. I visit the animals in the fragrant summer night, admiring the lithe, easy movement of one, the rippling power of another, thrilling always as they come to greet me, each according to their nature. Stardance, Dreamkeeper, Windwalker, Prairie Smoke, Moonbeam, Zephyr, Major Bear. Wolf, cougar, deer, lynx, fox, coyote, bear.

In their babyhood I cradled them, all these different creatures, holding their bottles as they greedily sucked the nutrients down in their bid for life. I wondered at the mysterious alchemy of milk transformed into wolf, milk into bear, milk into deer, inanimate minerals and molecules transformed into life and form and beauty, infused somehow with a mysterious animating spirit. Holding them close, feeling their heartbeat, in intimate contact as they peacefully, eagerly, trustingly, blissfully nursed; feeling their life, their essence, I fell in love each time anew.

I would notice each detail of a fawn, a kit, a wolf pup—its eyelashes, paws, subtle shadings on its face, a particular quality of responding to touch. Gazing at the beloved through the glow of loving, I would find a life form of singular wonder, suffused with beauty. Maybe all the myriad forms of Life are the Universe expressing itself through its own creations, admiring itself, dancing with itself. And loving is the vehicle through which it admires itself as it delights in each innovation, takes joy in every aspect: the glint of moonlight on lustrous fur, the grace of a leap, the soft look in a parent’s eye, a mischievous swat. It is right that each individual and each species be seen, appreciated, acknowledged, as its own important part of the resplendent tapestry of Life.

With love we bear witness to the beauty.

With love we want to fight for the beloved.

Founding wolf puppies photo circa 1994Founding wolf puppies photo circa 1994

Founding wolf puppies circa 1994

The Beginning: It was all because of Seven Wolf PuppiesPhoto of Wolf pup leaving the den.

Irresistable

The Stars must have been dancing the night they were born.

My friend Mary and I drove up a lonely, icy, winding road high in the Uinta Mountains of Utah in December of 1990. Despite a two-day blizzard, she was bringing me to visit a man of French descent named Jean, who lived in an unheated, unfinished cabin at an altitude of 8,000 feet. He had some beautiful wolves she wanted me to see. She promised that it would be a memorable weekend even though he really didn’t want visitors (there was a reason he lived alone at 8,000 feet in winter). We imposed ourselves anyway, bearing gifts of food and drink for a New Year’s celebration. I had no idea my life was about to be radically transformed.

An Awakening

Jean’s driveway was impassable, so we parked the car at the bottom of the hill, bundled up against the minus twenty-degree cold, grabbed our things, and trekked up to his cabin. As I rounded a curve, a row of enclosures was highlighted in the moonlight and were filled with the most vibrant, kinetic, intelligent creatures I had ever seen. Wolves. I stood transfixed. They were magnificent.

We spent the weekend visiting the wolves, talking about wolves, cross country skiing and celebrating New Year’s Eve with a wood fire blazing against the bitter cold outside.

When Mary and I drove back to Flagstaff the next morning, I was dazed. The sensation was so strong that I had to express it out loud. I told Mary, I feel strange. I have no idea what happened this weekend but somehow I sense that something inside me is being rearranged.

She asked me if I could explain further. I couldn’t. I honestly don’t know any more than that. I feel disoriented at a very deep level. It’s not bad—it’s just...strange.

Another strange thing occurred over the course of the visit; unexpectedly a powerful energy emerged between Jean and me, as if something within both of us had been recognized, stirred awake. After I left that weekend, there was a pull in my belly that wouldn’t let me rest, wouldn’t let me focus. The sense of expectancy I felt was so great that I could barely function at work.

Simultaneously something similar was happening with Jean. He thought, What! I’m hiding up here and I was found! Something awakened in me. I asked myself 'What is happening to me?’ I tried to figure out why this change. But a connection was made. It was extraordinary, Mary bringing us together. Somehow we were spiritually in synch. I waited a while to see if there was still a pull there after some time had passed. Then I felt, ‘I have to check this out.’ I had been looking for something that felt right.

After a few weeks, Jean decided to make the fourteen-hour drive to Arizona to visit me. Over time the connection between us grew, based on our deep common love of wolves and nature, and a potent sense that together we might give birth to something important. The driving force behind that intuition has not lessened in thirty years.

Despite the long drive each way from Utah to Arizona, Jean’s commitment to his animals, and my job obligations, we found a way to visit one another periodically over the next four years. In the spring of 1994, I visited him in his temporary home, a trailer in San Bernardino, California. He was working there training wolves for Disney’s White Fang II. One afternoon he drove back to the trailer, parked, and suggested I have a look inside his car. There was a brown grocery box sitting on the back seat. I leaned over to look inside to find it was filled with varying shades of black, gray, and brown fur huddled tightly together. Very, very quiet fur that belonged to seven wolf puppies. Jean had brought them home from the film set to hand raise. One of the wolves had given birth.

A Sacred Trust

Photo of Susan and wolf puppies

In love

Nothing prepared me for the flood of feelings that rushed through my body as I held each wolf pup close to me. That was the end of my life as I knew it.

My visit stretched on and on. I was lost in a haze of love and nurturing from which I have never recovered. A friend of mine observed, "You know what has happened to you, Susan? Motherhood." And I realized it was true. I could practically feel my hormones flowing. It made no difference at all that I was nurturing another species.

We endlessly prepared baby bottles, boiling whole chickens for hours to obtain the maximum amount of nutrients, skimming off the fat and adding the liquid to condensed milk. The size of the nipple opening had to be adjusted so the flow was just right to keep them from choking. I maneuvered each squirming pup into just the right vertical position, their back against my chest, my hand supporting their chin, fingers making a seal around their mouths. Their paws moved back and forth rhythmically in utter bliss. I felt a deep sense of peace.

At first each baby would eagerly greet me as the bearer of milk. Through time, experience and gentleness, and as their awareness developed, a bond formed—permanent, irreplaceable, and irrevocable. The window of opportunity for bonding with a wild creature is shorter, more critical, more hardwired than with a domestic animal. There is an inviolable bond that develops then, once that precious gift is received; a trust that can only bloom once.

As the pups grew, we took them for walks in the California mountains: seven young wolflets, two dogs and two humans. These were times of great joy, watching them test their abilities and explore their world with all the intensity of their being.

After one of these walks, all the pups fell sick with a devastating illness that the vet was unable to diagnose. They were vomiting uncontrollably and had unremitting diarrhea. They became weaker and weaker. The vet had no suggestions except to keep them hydrated. It was touch and go for days as Jean and I cleaned them at both ends. We hung up IV bags for each pup so the life-giving fluids could slowly drip under their skin. We repeated this every two hours, for each pup, twenty-four hours a day. By the time we had finished, bleary-eyed, we started the process all over again. They struggled to live; we willed them to live, and all seven did live. There was no way I could abandon those wolf babies who had bonded with me and then counted on me.

Later I discovered that that depth of bond was available with every species I was to meet, given the right circumstances.

Dreams and Practicalities

My visit extended until my savings were depleted and it became necessary for me to find a job. The one that opened for me was as a psychologist in the super-maximum-security prison in Colorado. I loved the work. It was like bringing light into the darkness, and the inmates responded in poignant and powerful ways. But I soon found I couldn’t live without those wolf puppies, so far away in California. There was no place locally that would rent to me with wolves, so I kept searching until I found some land and a trailer I could afford. I applied for permits and prepared enclosures with the help of two prison guards who had become friends. Eventually Jean was able to move from California to join me, bringing the pups with him along with the rest of his wolves.

We talked and we dreamed and decided to purchase land together, a place where he could run his movie business, and I could develop a wildlife sanctuary and hold retreats. I felt compelled to share the transformative experiences I had with those seven pups; that started me on an ever-unfolding journey of discovery. We decided Jean would handle the animals of the sanctuary for the public, using his uncanny instinctive gift of communicating with animals. This ability was his since childhood.

When I was 5, he told me, going for walks in the French countryside I would call horses to me with my mind and they would come, first one, then the rest of them. I’d grab some grass and hold it out to them. My mother and grandmother remarked how animals followed me everywhere. It never occurred to me that it was anything unusual. I just did it naturally. Over the years Jean, in his own unique way, developed a sense of deep trust and intimacy with every animal under his care, regardless of species.

Jean self portrait drawing

Jean, self-portrait, age 7

I continued to work in the prison and look after the wolves while Jean looked for land.

One day I received a call:

I found some beautiful land. Forty acres. How much?

A quarter million. Are you crazy?

You have to come and see it.

I did. I drove up to Idaho, through the little local town of Driggs, continued through a corridor of trees and over a creek across a makeshift bridge made of two metal culverts with dirt packed in-between. As I rounded a corner, before me opened a vista of wide fields of sage, a stream lined with cottonwoods and aspen, and a spectacular view of the Grand Teton Mountain Range. I couldn’t believe land like that could still be purchased—wild and gorgeous, vibrant, pulsing with Life. There was no choice in my mind—we had to find a way to make it ours. Later I discovered it was a finger of a wildlife corridor that stretched all the way to the Yukon, giving it a vitality that can only come from land where animals could still move freely.

Photo of the living land.

The living land

The land was an inholding of property owned by a member of a fractious family that didn’t want it to be sold. It wasn’t clear if the owner would give in to his family’s demands. It wasn’t clear if we would be able to obtain permits to house the animals. The land was situated in a ranching community that hated wolves, and within a state that did its best to eradicate them, by law. And I had no idea how we could find the money. From my concrete-encased prison office I tried everything I could think of to make it happen—long distance calls to convince Idaho bankers that it was a safe loan; calls to try to convince the Idaho Department of Fish and Game that the wolves wouldn’t escape and eat the neighbors, their pets, or their livestock.

It was a long struggle. Not one bank wanted to lend money on raw land. Jean and I each sold everything we owned and with an additional loan from a loving and remarkable friend, managed to come up with the down payment. Once we secured the rest of the funds needed to close the deal, the next step was to obtain county and state permits to keep wild animals on the land.

After a year of trying to acquire permits and paying many thousands of dollars to a lawyer, we were introduced to a highly conservative right-wing rancher who was a state senator and happened to oversee the budget for the Department of Fish and Game. When he heard our story, he stepped in and took a principled stand. He insisted it was not right that Fish and Game gave us permission to accommodate the animals and then renege. They should grant us the permit and let market forces determine our future. Without his intervention, Earthfire would not exist.

While hoping for permits, Jean bought a used unheated seventeen-foot trailer to live in on the property. In an act of faith, and with the permission of the owner, he began to put in a well and utilities in the dead of winter, 1997, before we had even bought the property. We didn’t close on the land until January 1998.

Interestingly, I felt the same powerful tug in my belly to be on the land in Idaho as when I first met Jean and his wolves. I couldn’t concentrate on my work. I kept losing myself in the picture on my desk of the trailer in the middle of the field of sagebrush. Finally, I could stand it no more, and left my job to move to Idaho late that summer. Jean began building a six-hundred square foot log cabin for us to live in. Forever etched in my mind is an image of him on hands and knees in the dark, open to the frigid night, smoothing the wet concrete that would become our floor. The ice crystals that formed in the concrete that night created patterns that are still there today.

The Seven Wolf Founders of Earthfire

For the first few years, we lived not knowing if we would have enough food to feed our animals from week to week; if the neighbors would shoot more of our animals, or if they might succeed in forcing us off the land by political means. I scavenged thrown-out pastries and fruits from the bins behind the grocery store for the bears. We couldn’t keep helpers because the work was hard, the pay poor and the hours long. When staff would leave, we had to start all over again, cleaning the enclosures, chopping ice, looking for someone else to train. Three years into the business, Fish and Game was still dragging out our licensure and we were up to our necks in debt—to friends, relatives, credit cards and a few unwilling creditors as well.

One day I received a phone message. A woman I didn’t know wanted to donate ten thousand dollars to our endeavor from her foundation. Slowly, with the help of early supporters, Earthfire started to grow. We were given a log cabin kit and converted it into a 14’ by 20’ office, gratefully moving out of the makeshift office in a sea container, complete with dripping ceiling. Bit by bit, as we raised the funds, Jean built a functional bridge for safe access to our land over the creek, some outbuildings, and designed and built enclosed Wildlife Gardens to create a space for the animals to play.

We prepared a cemetery for those we lost and put up a beautiful 30-foot diameter yurt facing east to the sunrise and the Grand Tetons, to host retreats.

Photo of the yurt.

The yurt

All along we continued to feel our way into how to share the animals’ voices and beauty in the most powerful way possible. We never really had much of a plan—we just followed our noses and things evolved organically, with unexpected trouble, traumas and gifts. Up until this time, the single deepest love of my life had been a scruffy stray kitten who wandered into the farmhouse I was renting while studying for my Ph.D. and purred his way into my heart. But I regret to say that the impact of that love lay dormant for years as I pursued the culturally accepted trajectory of life. Those first wolf puppies reconnected me to a place hidden within, to what was truly important. They opened me to love and magic and a fierce desire to protect, to share their wonder. With my heart so opened, my life has been fully satisfying ever since, despite the obstacles and loss along the way.

Photo of the wildlife garden