Adolph Murie

Yet another library sale 'find,' THE WOLVES OF MOUNT MCKINLEY caught my attention by its plain cover and its sheer weight. Literally, it's a heavy book, printed on the glossy paper once found in only the best magazines and coffee table books. Then I opened it up and learned it was published the year I was born, 1944. So of course I had to have it. What's fifty cents, after all.

Something of a bibliophile curiosity, my newly acquired copy of WOLVES was printed by the U.S. Government Printing Office, and is "For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents ... Price: $1.00." So, even better, seventy-two years later I got it for half price.

The author of WOLVES I found out had a pretty illustrious career as a biologist and author. Adolph Murie (1899-1974) authored a dozen books or more (he died following an epileptic seizure at age 74) and this particular book has attained the status of a scientific classic. Reprinted forty years later by the University of Washington Press, the book remains in print to this day.

I've read parts of WOLVES, especially the habits of the wolves themselves, and found particularly interesting a section on Wags, a wolf taken from a den at only a week old and raised by the Park Rangers. But Murie's observations of the wolves in their wild habitat around McKinley are equally fascinating, like the encounter of a pack with a solitary wolf, which is eventually, quite viciously, driven off.

Other species of the park are given their due too - Dall sheep, grizzly bears, red foxes, caribou, even the golden eagle. Interactions of predator and prey are studied and documented carefully. Murie was one of the first biologists to write about the importance of mice in wolves' diet, a phenomenon written about years later by Farley Mowat in his bestseller, NEVER CRY WOLF. I have plenty left here to read, and I plan to dip into this book from time to time. It is definitely a collector's item I will hang on to.

THE WOLVES OF MOUNT MCKINLEY was written as a scientific study, so the style can be a bit dry in places, but it is so chock-full of information it has become over the years one of the most valuable books of its kind, one that deserves its current place in the genre. It may have been written over seventy years ago, but wolves in the wild have not changed much, so most of what Murie wrote still applies. Highly recommended to anyone interested in Alaska or the study of wild animals in their natural habitat.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER… (mais)