Wolf in Abruzzo, Italy
A
t my home in the hills of Umbria in central Italy, the wolves usually begin howling after dark. There is a pack in the hills behind my house, and when they call out, another pack often answers from farther away. I have never seen a wolf in all the time I have lived here, but my neighbors have. They own a farm down the road, and more and more often, they have watched wolves circle in as the sun rises, testing the flock, only to be chased off by the Maremma Sheepdogs that protect it. My neighbors told me that once, a single dog managed to hold off an entire pack.
What I’ve realized is that it was never about seeing one. It is about knowing something wild moves through the same hills, just beyond sight. On long walks at dusk, I sometimes pause when I hear movement in trees too dense to see through. If a wolf is there, it has almost certainly seen me first. I may never catch sight of it, but the possibility makes me stop and listen.
Across Europe, small outfitters now run trips built around that same sense of possibility, tracking packs through Italian forests, following prints through the snow in Sweden and placing photographers in remote hides overnight in Finland. Some trips cost thousands. A sighting remains the prize and, when it happens, people talk about it for years.
