Face to Face

The highway seemed to stretch without an end as I drove along for home.

IT was on that bright, summer morning as I was driving with the deep woods on either side of me that I saw it up ahead.

I pulled over to the curb, thinking the long-legged animal was a deer. But to my surprise, I saw a lean, gray wolf, standing in the underbrush on the edge of the woods. Stepping out of my car,I stood thirty feet from the wolf.

It was my first sighting of a wolf in my whole life and I was thrilled.

My heart beat quicker as the wolf and I stared for what seemed a moment frozen in time.

The wolf wasn't sleek but mangy and thin, as if it'd had a rough life over the past winter months.

I wondered just what it was like to be a lone wolf in an area I didn't think had wolves. Was it lonely? Did it long for a mate of its own?

Then, time moved forward and the wolf turned and dashed into the darkness of its wooded home.

by ©Ally Cleetz (based on a true story)


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