Traveling to New Jersey’s Lakota Wolf Preserve
Our destination is the Lakota Wolf Preserve.
Here, one can view wolves in their natural surrounds in New Jersey for the first time since the late 1800s. At first the progressions of the coal and iron industries, and then guns, poisons, and traps between then and the 1990s, when Lakota was established, had removed the wolf from the state. But the love of nature, and particularly of wolves, of wildlife photographer Dan Bacon brought that era to a close. Having gotten into communications with Clayton Taylor, whose family has a long history of wildlife preservation, Dan brought his then-15 wolf pets out of Colorado, where they were no longer welcomed, to some of the Taylor property. Dan’s first wolf, called Kazan after the name of one found in a childhood story, is one of many canis lupus members of the Preserve, where all of the wolves have been raised in captivity by human beings. The three subspecies at Lakota are the Arctic, the Timber, and the Tundra wolf. The wolves are cared for and kept in large, fenced-off areas within ten acres of Kittatinny woodlands, areas which act as perfect replicas of their utterly wild relatives’ dwellings. Dan, his wife Pam, and their friend Jim Stein run the Preserve.
At quarter to two in the afternoon, our four o’ clock tour tickets purchased and our packed lunches greedily eaten, we take our digital camera and begin a half-mile hike up a very steep and very rocky mountain trail in order to get to where the wolves are. As tour time nears, a couple of half-length school buses are utilized to take people up the trail, but we are quite early and, of course, quite tough. Oak, bay, and fern abound all around us, and the mountainous air flows crisp and clear in our lungs. It’s delicious to have this air to breathe after the oppressive humidity of the last several days, which had culminated in some wicked lightning storms and even a rare tornado warning throughout the previous evening (the twister never showed)! Being a runner, I find this kind of hike exhilarating. No maps are provided, but we find our way by following the ceramic tiles with wolf paw prints painted on them which show up fastened to trail-side trees now and again.
Eventually, as directed by a sign, we take the left branch of a fork in the trail and a moment later come upon the cleared area just in front of the fences. Here there are a few small decorative garden plots interspersed throughout, and a few benches.
And a few yards before us and slightly to our right, there are three gray wolves. We approach and I, having usurped the camera back at the car, commence my “stalking” for great wolf shots (I do my best to fantasize that I am some photographer from National Wildlife or National Geographic, but the fact that I have to take all my shots from behind chainlink fencing dampens my delusions of grandeur.). Although the tour shall not begin for another hour, anyone is free to come catch glimpses of these beautifully primal creatures from this vantage point. Two of the wolves lounge, but the third paces back and forth at a trot. At one point a fourth wolf shows up, and soon some growls and yips are emitted. I follow the action; one of the wolves bites another on the snout a few times, eliciting whines from him. Are they playing? Or has a “lesser” male somehow irritated the alpha male? We are alone to ponder this for now, although that is fated to change. Shortly after, a couple show up, having also braved the steep trail on foot. They are prepared with a camcorder, and the woman wears a blue t-shirt with a wolf airbrushed on the front. It turns out they have paid to sponsor a wolf, which is how the wife got the nice-looking shirt, among other amenities. Their sponsorship money will be spent to help with their chosen wolf’s food and medical needs. (They are from New England, where the husband is an egg farmer. He only farms, sells, and eats brown-shelled eggs. He insists they taste better.)
Eventually the buses arrive and the area becomes significantly more crowded. Shortly after the buses park and their passengers spill out to await the tour, a Jeep Cherokee comes on the scene. It is Dan Bacon, and suddenly more wolves begin to appear within our view, very frisky.
It turns out that Dan is the bearer of Alpo wolf cookies! The outer chainlink gate is unlocked by Pam, who acts as ticket-taker as we all enter the tour area, where we can get much better views of many more wolves, who frolick and leap to catch the wolf cookies that Dan tosses over the fence or passes through the links to have the wolves take them right out of his hand. Continuing to toss cookies, Dan leads us photography-crazed people to a small central area and, in his laconic voice, begins entertaining us with stories about individual wolves and their personal histories and his history with them. Each wolf has its name listed on a placard on whichever one of the areas it calls home.
Wolves have amazing senses. They can hear sounds three to five miles distant and possess superior night vision, which permits them to hunt in the dark if they have need of it. Wolves are carnivores, but extremely efficient ones. They waste next to nothing from a kill. When wolves kill a deer, they will leave absolutely nothing behind except the jawbone, for which they seem to have no taste. In line with their famous trait of mating for life, wolves are very protective of those they have bonds with. If a wolf goes down and is or seems to be hobbled or incapacitated, another wolf nearby will straddle the downed wolf as an act of protection. They will also offer the same protective behaviors to any humans that they might have a bond with, such as those who have raised them. The wolf is a highly intelligent animal; indeed, it is too intelligent to obey mere “come hither” sounds like dogs. The only way that a human caretaker can summon an individual wolf to himself is by calling that wolf’s individual name.
The horrific images of wolves’ behavior that pervade so many human imaginations are decidedly fallacious and even silly. Wolves that are raised in captivity form strong emotional bonds with their human keepers; apparently, these wolves are especially enamored of human females and children (it’s “women and children first” in the wolf-mind). Wolves in the wild have no interest in being near mankind and will do their utmost to range as far from the nearest humans as they can. There is not even a single recorded incident of a wolf having eaten a human being. “Little Red Riding Hood” is about as fraudulent as stories get. Wolves are hunted down by mankind out of nothing other than blatant ignorance and fear (I suspect there are also those shallow hunters who believe it is something fantastic to wear or to sell wolf pelts).
Eventually it is time for us to leave Lakota and journey back to Mount Laurel. On the road home, however, we cannot resist stopping at Marshall’s Farm Market. We had spied their early season Jersey White corn on our way to Columbia. We buy a baker’s dozen ears; we also cannot resist buying home-made peach preserves, “old style honey roasted peanut butter” (which has turned out to be absolutely the best peanut butter I’ve eaten in my life), a loaf of home-made pumpernickel; a couple slabs of home-made fudge; and, not forgetting the egg farmer from New England, a carton of a dozen brown-shelled eggs (I’ve since made a couple of omelettes using them, and I think that guy was on to something). A few miles down the road from Marshall’s, we stop again to eat at King Cole’s roadside restaurant (I have a deliciously greasy cheeseburger, curly cheese-fries, and a Heinekin) which is fortuitously situated next to the Chill Out ice cream stand (I don’t eat ice cream, but the others do). We eat our dinners outside at a picnic bench overlooking the river; I snap a few shots of the sunlit waters and the accompanying landscape.
Then it’s back to Highway 31, and the carting home of memories of a New Jersey adventure.
