Part ululation, part harmony, part savagery, all wild

From the desert...

​And then last night, as I lay spreadeagled and naked under the hot velvet kiss of darkness, an eerie sound pulled me lucid from deep desert dreams. Part ululation, part harmony, part savagery, all wild. Coyotes were singing under the stars, and it was all I could do not to tug on clothes and follow the sound, like some barefoot ghost, into the darkness.

I understand how people go missing in wild places. My atavistic soul yearns to run with this pack, to nuzzle furry flanks, nip and be nipped, run until my pads are bloody. It seemed the sanest course of action, panting deep in my base brain.

And then, as I was flinging clothes around the room, I woke properly, and of course the coyotes were miles away in deep desert, their song arrowing through the clear night air to lodge uncomfortably in my pelt and heart and belly. I lay back on the bed and let the barbs work their magic, loving the familiar feeling that prickled my scalp as the unearthly strands of dog-music wove and soared and vanished.
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The feeling: that I am a wild thing in a tame skin, restless between worlds, never quite fully in either but filled with awareness and grateful magic from both. And more, that I am grubbily, beautifully human, and at the same time am the coyotes, their haunting music, and the infinite night cresting above like some dark and starry wave.

Gina Chick