Places

Letter to Julia from Lobo del Lago Lunar, Lupus Philodox Child of Gaia

The Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest is a 2.76-million-acre National Forest which runs along the Mogollon Rim and the White Mountains in east-central Arizona and into New Mexico. It bor­ ders both the Fort Apache and the San Carlos Indian Reservations. It has very little to recommend it to Garou — no caerns, no major Wyrm threats, and only a tiny population of Kinfolk.

It is dear to me, however, because it is my home and because it is a tiny success story in a world that has endured a century of disasters for our wolf Kin­ folk. In the 1960s, the Mexican wolf was on the point of extinction and with it the last wolves native to the American Southwest. Too many Garou watched the tragedy unfold with a sense of helplessness. They had seen it happen in the British Isles and Western Europe and so many other places throughout the world. The human Kinfolk of the Children of Gaia refused to sit idle, though. They wrote letters to politicians, published newspapers, and pleaded with scientists in the U.S. and in Mexico in a desperate effort to save the Mexican wolf.

Humans rounded up all the Mexican wolves they could find to create a captive-breeding program. Many Garou openly questioned this move. Some even claimed it was tantamount to genocide, for a captive wolf population could never be returned to the wild. Even those who admitted that the movement these

Kinfolk started was well-intentioned largely doubted that anything of worth would come from it. However, one lupus Child of Gaia named Cub Finder spent the next twenty years in Homid so she could spy on the program from within.

During this time Cub Finder secretly includ­ ed herself in the breeding program, adding several Kinfolk and even two Garou to the population. The humans in charge of the program declared the captive-breeding program a success, and in 1998 they reintroduced the Mexican wolf to the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. To everyone’s surprise the wolves returned to the wild with relatively few problems, and there are now over 40 wolves in the area. It is a small population, to be sure, but it’s a start, and Cub Finder’s werewolf children soon mated with wolf Kinfolk, one of which whelped me in the mid-2000s. Eight years later, and I’m traveling the world assessing the health of wolf populations for the Garou nation. Not bad for a young wolf, eh?

My next destination is Russia, which I under­ stand has tens of thousands of wolves, so I’ll have to break my report into chunks. Why is it that most of my wolf Kinfolk must live in places that are so much colder than my native climate? Actually I know that answer is humans prefer warmer places, too, but it still doesn’t make me look forward to arctic tem­ peratures. I’ll send you a letter when I send my next report.