Several days after I took the pups to the place overlooking Spirit Island, Youngest Nephew came to visit one afternoon as I lay sunning. “Zhi-shay’,” he began hesitantly.“I don’t know my life purpose.”“Sure you do,” I replied. “Part of your purpose was determined before you were even born. It’s just not clear to you yet because you are still young.”“When will I know?” he asked. “The Creator made us, you, me, all of us here, your family. It made us for a very special reason.”“So I don’t need to go seek my vision?” he asked.“No,” I said. “Wolves do not need to seek a vision.”“Our purpose and reason for being,” I said, “Is to be wolves.”---The Wolf’s Trail tells of Zhi-shay’, an elder wolf, and a litter of young wolves living somewhere on the side of a hill overlooking the river that flows through Nagahchiwanong in northern Minnesota. Zhi-shay’, who knows the whole story of the parallel relationship between wolves and the Ojibwe going all the way back to the Beginning, sharing it with his nieces and nephews, and us. Replete with universal lessons, The Wolf’s Trail is the story of the Ojibwe, told by wolves, of what they were and have become, and the promise of their becoming.
