but the most significant moments took place on the way home.
My friend and I were boarding a plane in London to begin the second leg of the long journey back to Washington. With my backpack flung over my shoulder, I was trying to avoid banging into other passengers as I shuffled my way down the aisle. I was about to pass a man placing a bag in the overhead compartment. Suddenly he looked at me and asked, “Have you been in Africa?”
I had a deep tan and was wearing a beaded necklace of coral and warthog tusk. Clearly, I couldn’t have gotten the tan or the necklace in London, so with a smile and a good-natured touch of sarcasm, I responded, “Yes, what gave it away?”
He smiled back and mentioned my necklace. Then he started asking about my trip. Where had I been? What animals had I seen?
But a narrow plane aisle with annoyed passengers piling up behind us was no time or place for an extended conversation. So, after a few brief answers, I continued to my seat a dozen rows back.
Every day people have brief encounters that they never think about again. It might be chitchat in the checkout line at the grocery store or a pleasant exchange of “Thank you” and “You’re welcome” while holding open a door for a stranger. This easily could have been one of those forgotten encounters.
Fortunately, the man who had struck up a conversation with me wanted to continue it. After we reached cruising altitude, he looked back, unclasped his seat belt, and walked down to my aisle seat. He greeted me with a sweet smile and a kind “Hi again.”
We talked easily. He too was on his way back from Africa. He had been visiting his sister in Kenya, where she and her husband operated a tented camp in a remote area. We swapped stories of the African animals we had seen. Through our tales, we relived the wonder of the wildlife and the respect for the natural order of things that we had witnessed on the African savanna.
I immediately launched into a story about when I saw a pack of five spotted hyenas splashing through marshy waters to steal a zebra carcass from three lions. It was like an old-fashioned sword fight.
The hyenas attacked first. Then the lions withdrew, dragging most of the kill with them. Ever the opportunists, the hyenas snatched up a few hunks of meat left behind, then withdrew a few feet themselves.
Not satisfied with their meager scraps, the hyenas made another charge. Their high-pitched hums and whines sent a shiver down my spine. Instantly one of the lions surged forward with a ferocious roar and scattered the thieves. But they immediately regrouped, chased away the lions, and claimed their prize—the rest of the carcass. Victors: hyenas!
My new friend listened with rapt attention. Then, with his blue eyes sparkling, he described in vivid detail how a cheetah had chased down a gazelle. As he spoke, I could smell the dust kicked up from the dry grasses and feel the relentless heat of the sun. I saw the rippling muscles of the cheetah as she hunted the nimble gazelle. With his hands, my friend pantomimed how the cheetah gobbled up ground with bursts of speed as fast as a car on the highway.
I immediately knew I was in the presence of a gifted storyteller.
Not surprisingly, he revealed he was a filmmaker. In fact, at that moment he was finishing a film about the life of beavers for National Geographic. He told me he was on his way to their headquarters in Washington to discuss the film’s progress.
The more we talked, the more we enjoyed each other’s company. Our common interests certainly helped. In addition to being a filmmaker, he was, like me, a photographer, a bird-watcher, and passionate about wildlife. I was also taken by his smile, his laughter, and his kindness.
Then we got separated.
In the mad rush of people getting off the plane in Washington, I lost sight of this man whom I wanted to know more about. I didn’t even know his name. With a sigh I resigned myself to the fact that we would never see each other again. Our relationship would be no more than pleasant conversation to pass the time on a long plane ride.
Fate appeared to have other ideas.
As I joined a hundred other people at baggage claim to get my luggage, I turned—and there he was! We both beamed in recognition, and relief, and picked up our conversation. He told me more about his wildlife films, and I told him that I had applied to work at the National Zoo.
And we finally introduced ourselves. Now I had a name to put with the face of Jim Dutcher.
Despite the bond we felt for each other, we lived in two different parts of the country, almost in two different worlds. After Jim’s business in Washington, he was heading home to Idaho.
Idaho! I never would have guessed it. I had nothing against this western state, of course. It’s just that I didn’t know anything about it, except that potatoes came from there. My mind flashed back to grade school and the maps that showed the main products from each state. I pictured the map of Idaho with potato icons scattered about.
For an Easterner like me, who had never been west of the Mississippi River, Idaho seemed as remote as Africa. I couldn’t imagine life there.
Little did I know that in a few years’ time, Idaho would be the place where all my dreams would come true.
Long before the thought of living with wolves ever entered my mind, and even before I met Jamie, I honed my skills as a wildlife filmmaker. My first films were undersea adventures. I focused on the colorful fish that live among the reefs off the shores of my native Florida.
As beautiful and fascinating as I found the ocean, I was drawn to the forested mountains of the West. My teenage experiences as a wrangler fed my desire to film some of the animals that live there—like beavers.
These creatures are usually either underwater or in their lodges, making them tough to spot in the wild. So instead, for my movie, I built a beaver lodge inside a log cabin. I was able to film—from the other side of a large window—the comings and goings of a beaver family and show the world these quirky animals’ daily activities. I even filmed the birth of beaver kits.
The subject of my next film was a larger and decisively more dangerous animal. It was also much more elusive, almost to the point of being ghostly.
The cougar grasped the neck of the deer in her powerful jaws as she dragged the limp body through the dry pine needles and sparse clumps of grass. When she released her grip, the lifeless animal hit the ground with a thud.
The deer had been struck and killed by a vehicle—a certain tragedy for the deer and most likely a harrowing experience for the driver. For the cougar, it was a week’s worth of meals. But the food wasn’t only for her.
Three male cougar kittens watched with interest from the shadows of a nearby rocky perch. Their spotted youthful coats made them difficult for the naked eye to see. But my telephoto lens clearly caught their expressions, which seemed to say: “Here’s something new.”
Until this point, the six-week-old kittens’ nutrition had come exclusively from their mother’s milk. It was now time to wean them away from nursing. As carnivores, they needed to experience the taste of meat. This would be their first.
The mother looked up toward her kittens and sounded the call for dinner. Meow! Meow! Remarkably similar to the mewing of a household cat, the call of the cougar was nonetheless sharper, shorter, and more determined. To my ears it sounded like she was saying “Now! Now!” and was not about to take no for an answer.
The kittens dutifully heeded the call. Placing one furry oversized paw in front of the other, they gingerly stepped down from their perch toward this new lesson in survival.
Meanwhile, the mother prepared the meal the way mother cougars do. She cleaned a portion of the deer’s