I dreamed and journeyed this week with my white she-wolf guide.  I found myself in the familiar frozen landscape that seems to be my haven now, and through my layers of clothing I could still feel the chill of the starlit night around me.  I looked around to see her loping carefully toward me, stepping over white balls of fur who tumbled and hopped through the deep snow to keep up with her.  She stopped to carry one for a bit and then set it down in front of me, and I saw she had given birth to several fat and furry cubs since I saw her last.

I was excited for her and leaned down to greet these new little lives.  The mother wolf came to me and brushed against me hard enough to plop me into the snow, and I was quickly mobbed by six fat furry balls with very sharp baby teeth and wet cold tongues.  I giggled and let them clamor over me for awhile until I lost my breath from laughing, and then I gently removed them from my head and chest and sat back up.  After I had shaken off the little shoe-biter from my boot I leaned to the she-wolf and wrapped my arms around her furry neck to let her know how amazing her new family was.  She wrapped herself around me in the snow, and since her cubs quickly found their way to her teats to nurse I started to move away to give them space to eat.  She took the edge of my jacket in her mouth and gently pulled me back to her, so I laid my head down on her chest and snuggled to listen to her babies noisily drinking their fill.  I found myself smiling again at the thought of how the noises they were making reminded me of nursing my own children, and we laid together with me stroking her thick fur and her nursing her cubs until the last one had drifted off in a satisfied slumber against her mother’s warmth.

I dreamed while I dozed that she was giving me her name, which although she had been given it by my Inuit guide, was one she took to be hers and was giving it to me to know.  Her name was Tlun, which was snow with moonlight shining on it, and I thought it fit her fierce but gentle demeanor perfectly.  I woke with a start to find a little cold tongue licking me, so I rose to my feet to stand with her and the cubs and stare upwards at the crescent moon and brilliant stars that surrounded us on the hill where we stood.

Tlun threw back her head, gave a magnificent howl, and turned to look at me.  Her powerful spirit shone in her face as her cubs tumbled at her feet and she howled again.  I heard answering wolves in the distance this time, and she looked expectantly at me again.  I realized what she meant for me to do, laughed, and threw my head back to give the best howl my human throat could muster.  She seemed amused with my effort, nudged me  to try again, and demonstrated for me.  Her babies were doing their best to join in the conversation with little yips and yowls, so I let loose and howled again myself and was surprised to hear responses in the distance.

I remembered then that I had howled and barked with canines since childhood and gotten responses then as well, so I felt empowered and a bit giddy at the prospect of letting loose and having fun.  We stayed on that frozen hill for quite awhile pouring our hearts out and sharing ourselves with the moon, stars, and any other creatures who wanted to howl along with us, and I swear I saw Tlun laughing with her tongue handing out one side of her mouth at my joy and humorous attempts to talk wolf.  She reminded me that not only do I have a home there with my snowy friends, but that I need to relax, let loose, and just howl sometimes even if I can’t quite get the words to come out.

As I watched her cubs trying to hop around in the snow and howl like their mother I woke up giggling and chilly, and the next night when my little girls and I came out of a store to find a beautiful cold night lit by a bright moon I led my own cubs on a howling fest the whole way through the parking lot while we searched for our car.  I’m sure everyone around us thought we had lost our minds, but you know, sometimes you just gotta let loose and howl!!

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 23rd, 2010 at 11:31 am and is filed under Dreams, Journeys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.