It was a glorious Alaskan spring morning. The remnants of the winter glinted in the sun like diamonds lighting the way for the new life that blossomed all around. In a tiny cave in a small thicket in a vast forest our story begins. You see in this cave lay a wolf, but not just any wolf, the pack leader’s wife. Aurora had one pup this fine morning. His coat shown with the colors of the sun golden and lustrous. His eyes sparked pure like the river. He dwarfed the other puppies born that season, powerful and strong born to be a future leader. Tundra acted his part too. As the days passed he grew larger and more powerful, but also arrogant.
When the day came for the new pups to have their first hunt Tundra was excited. He knew he would bring the pack a great feast. They set out together smelling and tracking carefully, but Tundra didn’t like to go slow and track. Hunting was done by strength not with the mind. He shot out ahead of his pack, alone. It wasn’t long before Tundra was far from his brethren, far from the tiny cave in the small thicket, and was lost in the vast forest. Now less proud more afraid he ran blindly, raspberries poked at him, moose reared at him, game eluded his hunger.
Within a few days, Tundra lay tired and hungry, his golden coat dinghy and matted, his fierce blue eyes stinging in the cold, his powerful muscle shivering in the wind with no warm den and no warm pack to protect him. Suddenly he caught a scent, a familiar scent. Tundra began to use his keen nose and intellect to track this whiff of home. Up the river, past the raspberry grove, beyond the hunting trail, he finally found home. His pack did not greet him as a lost future leader but as a lost brother and a lost son.
From that day forward Tundra hunted with the pack. He used his nose and his cunning in harmony with his strength working together with his fellow wolves. He learned that the power of a pack working together is greater than any one wolf no matter how great that wolf is and that even the most powerful of beast will perish without the intelligence to use that power properly.
