Predator Prayer
Coyote entered my life like a silently held vow, a solid promise made one bright golden morning -- after a long forgetting -- to live life from the true center of the circle, which is so much wider than we let ourselves remember.
Before I saw them, I heard them. The more entwined their calls, the more undone I became, unraveled with primate awe. That soulful lamentation, ever-changing key, always ending in a high-octave affirmation of aliveness, with fierce vigor of wild blood, fur and bone. What a gift to listen to one of Earth’s most ancient and beautiful languages not yet lost, except to our once nuanced understanding of it.
I saw one male coyote almost every day. Running, pausing, running, lightfoot-prancing down the gentle grade -- that careful hunter with such radical poise, terrestrial ease. I followed him into this high valley to share home in these hills.
His eyes sought mine, and mine met his over and over again, both of us like curious children, every time I crested the hill. Their tawny starlight shone with calm curiosity. Those eyes were full of insight, and far-and-wide-sight. His eyes searching the miles lent the grassland a quiet sanctity, a self-awareness, an ancient aura of care.
At the bottom of my favorite hill for a few months every winter, the warp of the open valley met the weft of one, two, three creeks, braiding in confluence before falling from granite, like the last prayer of a life, into the shadow of sequoia in the deeper canyon below.
I came to immerse in the final month of rain, in the last vernal pool -- the song before the prayer. I lowered my body down with the awkward agility of a well-traversed animal determined to go where she wants to go.
The poison oak flowering down the hillside fringed the bath held together by clay and thick, loyal oak root. The crimson vine grew just close enough to make me move my bare body with primitive, humble vigilance as I settled into The Dara knot.
Immersed in ephemeral rainwater, still as a stone, held in the pulse of this valley vein, in the stealth, raw energy of winter, embraced in her cold channel of undoing and remaking… What was invisible before, suddenly became seen.
Ribbons of deer path, boar path, cat path, coyote path -- these thin lines of travel wove themselves together -- an upside-down nest, a skein of memories of comings and goings of unbroken, unfenced, unruined vitality. The hill, in her fleeting greening, wore them so proudly -- this tribute to the life she’s always loved to feel moving over and all around her.
Through a light mist I see coyote running crosswise, half-slope across the hill. He is sprinting faster than I’ve ever seen him run, when I see what he is chasing: a small herd of pronghorn antelope. Black-stripe-lightning fast, coyote is overtaken amidst the mud-thunder of hooves as jaguar strides past -- a spotted avatar, divinely embodied predator -- to find his lifeblood.
The mist begins to lift. Grizzly is watching from the top of the hill. She is grazing needlegrass, consuming ceaselessly with new life growing inside her. She will choose her time of engagement with living prey. Coyote sparks her appetite.
From the next hill over, I see a woman. Her long brown hair is falling over to graze the large boulder she is straddling with palpable all-is-wellness. She is grinding acorns in that endlessly hospitable granite crucible… a grateful goddess singing in her wild kitchen.
Her two children are climbing a stone to reach the lower limb of a valley oak. The sound of their laughter fills the now sun-drenched, deeply familial valley. They are watching for their father hunting pronghorn, hoping for a good midwinter kill. Their bellies are patient, soo patient. They understand from such a young age the virtue of hunger, the rhythm of fast and feast. They have already learned how to trust it, how to trust life.
How can this little valley hold the memory of so many invisible ones? I feel the land missing them all so dearly. The hills rise up eagerly to meet their footsteps moment after moment, year after year.
They are still here. The people are here, not invisible at all. They are waiting for us in the center of the circle. I step out of the pool and out of old-oak-time into the too quiet present moment. I will never see these hills the same way again.
Walking to the fire tower one early June evening, I see the edges of coyote. His fur and beacon ear tips come into focus where he is held in the sunset blonde expanse above the Pacific. The grasses were endlessly validating his kindred, flaxen fur. This old camouflage, evolved over millennia, appeared in that moment not to be about hiding, but about harmony.
As he looked up from his ground-squirrel-pounce, I felt him missing the bigger hunt he used to play in. His muscles, his fast grace were made to chase deer and pronghorn, to flee jaguar and bear.
His far-reaching eyes were meant to see so much more big life on the horizon, not just rodents underground.
His paws and claws were honed to dig dens unreachable by grizzly who once cleared much bigger paths through the brush for him to navigate… who graciously left cooling carcass gifts for coyote to share with condor, vulture, raven, eagle.
His wit and will, I know, were crafted to outsmart, and to charm the cunning people of these hills.
When I hear coyote now, I wonder, does he miss brother wolf? A competitor, but somehow an ally. Who inspired who to be more emotive, more sensual, more fierce, more nuanced in their howling? Their voices once entwined night after night alongside the fleeting, braided creeksong.
The streams have gone dry, but the next ephemeral gift has emerged from the hills: happiness-orange poppies, purple sky lupine, spring-rain-head-down shooting stars, courageous yellow violet. Wildflowers own the hills, are the hills. For a short while they inherit complete sovereignty with the powerful tenure that only small things can really possess. Where do they go when they disappear every year? I see them in my mind’s eye through the scorched-Earth months. The summer-dormant plains, bereft of color and life, are animated only by my blessed imagination.
It’s far too quiet now. The coyotes are saving their cries for the cool season. The frogs, once raucous and trilling with the intermittent rains, are aestivating safely under the dry creek beds. The meadowlarks have taken their melody to the edges of more perennial bodies of water.
It’s so quiet in summer, all I can hear is the lichen humming with heart-orange wisdom through hot days and hot nights.
Where did everyone go?
They are here. All those beautiful predators -- They are in my heart, as they will forever remain in the heart of the hills. They are so fully alive, and beautifully so, in the grief I finally set free here.
They live on in us, as they do in coyote. Their big teeth and talons made our big hearts, distilled the best of our humanity in the long and fearful nights that once caused us to hold much closer to each other.
We know exactly how apex predators hold entire ecosystems in delicate balance, but we forgot how they held our humanity in place, too.
For two years, I let coyote bring out the best in me. His mythical voice reoriented me, recentered my life, wove my spirit into deeper loving kinship, sisterhood, and helpful ancestral memory.
So many original languages born of this Earth have been lost -- eradicated as the wolves, bears and jaguars were. Without knowing the meaning of coyote lyrics, we can still listen with our predator-given attunement, empathy and compassion, and feel the pathos of the Earth herself merge with our remnant, wild, better selves.