[This is the opening section of a larger piece about a subset of the homeless population who, like the coyote, have learned to live with without living entirely in civilization]
The dog and I were on a short hiking trail about twenty miles north of downtown Seattle that tracks through a patch of heavily wooded land left in its wild natural state because the terrain is too steep to easily accommodate houses or condominiums. Actually, the land has been left in a quasi-wild and semi-natural state; remnants of the forest that use to be here are still visible in the rotting remains of massive stumps, ten or twelve feet across and engraved with telltale wedge-shaped notches hacked eighty or ninety years ago to accommodate lumberjacks’ springboards. These stumps, aptly named “nurse trees,” serve as a nourishing base of support for younger versions of themselves that sprouted on top in the decaying heartwood, or inside the hollow pith chamber, and the thick exposed roots of these now towering offspring hang over and down the ancient stumps like the tentacles of gargantuan alien parasites. The land, christened with the uninspired name “Southwest County Park,” straddles a well-used road connecting two adjacent towns. The bulk of the park is on the south side of the road, behind a narrow unpaved parking area and an informational sign that includes a map of the adjacent spiderweb of short looping trails that curl through stands of alder, Sitka spruce, and red cedar. But it’s the unmapped trail through the strip of park that runs along the north side of the road that the dog and I frequent on sunny mornings like this one.
The north trail is well groomed, and carpeted with fresh gravel in places where small springs cross on their way down to a larger stream at the base of a deep ravine. There are several spur trails intersecting with the main pathway. Most meander up to the edge of the ravine and then eventually straggle their way back to the main trail, but a couple of them dive directly to the ravine floor, to the clear, shallow stream pooling in low spots along its route to Puget sound, which waits patiently a mile or so off to the west. On this day, the dog and I slide and stumble our way down one of these spurs to the stream and spend a few minutes absorbing the cleansing sound of a mossy tree-fall waterfall before climbing the steep and dusty slope back up to the main trail. I sometimes start our walk this way to “pre-exhaust” myself because the trail is otherwise fairly flat, and the down and back from the primitive roadside parking area is barely two miles.
Shortly after resuming the main trail, still feeling the effects of the climb, we round a bend and an extremely large coyote suddenly steps out onto the path directly in front of us. He is coming from the south side, from the road side. He is barely fifteen feet away. When he sees us, he stops with his body in profile straddling the entire width of the trail and his head turned squarely at us. At first, I think it’s a wolf. It looks like a wolf—its markings are indistinguishable from those of a wolf. And it is big for a coyote. The dog and I have both stopped, completely motionless. This is highly unusual behavior for the dog. She normally tugs excitedly whenever we encounter another dog on the trail—which is quite frequently. Just a few moments ago we met a woman hiking with her yellow lab, who was off leash, and I had to pull hard to keep the dog from lunging their direction as we crossed paths. But she is perfectly still, and there is no pressure on the lead. She is a statue frozen in midstride, a still-bent front paw held steady off the ground in suspended animation. I am too, clamped in the moment in mid step, although both of my feet are firmly planted, maybe extra-firmly, like the feet of a sprinter against the starting block.
And the coyote as well. He stood there—I’m pretty sure it was a “he”—spanning the trail and glaring at us for perhaps six or seven seconds. It was enough time for me to give his form a good look over. His coat was healthy, and he appeared very well fed. Despite his size, I knew he had to be a coyote. A few months back I ran into a fellow hiker who told how his dogs had rousted a small family of coyotes down by the stream, so I have been halfway expecting to see one eventually. But I wasn’t expecting to see something this big. Too big? He was larger than any German Shepard, taller and longer, but perhaps only half as heavy. I quickly probed my memory for what I know about the differences between coyotes and wolves. I learned from a guide at a wolf sanctuary in Indiana several years ago that you can quickly distinguish a coyote from a wolf by looking at the ears. A wolf’s ears are triangular and rounded, similar to a husky’s, whereas a coyote’s ears are sharper, more pointed. The animal remained just long enough for me to make the ear assessment and confirm his pedigree. Then he gave with a muted sound that was halfway between a growl and a bark, but breathier than either, broke eye contact, and floated weightlessly into the underbrush on the other side of the trail, where he immediately dematerialized, evaporating into nothingness as suddenly as he had appeared. The dog and I stood still for perhaps another ten seconds, both of us listening. But there was no sound. We went to the spot where he entered the underbrush, but it appeared to be a solid wall of ferns and brambles. There was no crackle of twigs in the distance, no rustle of bushes, no crunching of leaves. No residual movement, no trace.