Shadow Mountain: A Memoir of Wolves, a Woman, and the Wild

by Renée Askins

Book Overview

After forming an intense bond with Natasha, a wolf cub she raised as part of her undergraduate research, Ren e Askins was inspired to found the Wolf Fund. As head of this grassroots organization, she made it her goal to restore wolves to Yellowstone National Park, where they had been eradicated by man over seventy years before. In this intimate account, Askins recounts her courageous fifteen-year campaign, wrangling along the way with Western ranchers...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385482264
• ISBN13: 9780385482264
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Amazing book

A beautifully written, phenomenal and engaging read

Renee's Wolves

Just before the start of Chapter one in the book Shadow Mountain is the Quote from Gandhi "Whatever you do will be insignificant and it is very important that you do it". Ghandi also once wrote that you can judge people by the way they treat their animals. Renee Askins founded the Wolf Fund in 1986 for the purpose of reintroducing the wolf into Yellowstone National Park. Renee Askins is a fine human being, one who, like Dian Fossey, has devoted herself to one endangered species and from her efforts has found ground breaking and hopefully, long lasting success. Shadow Mountain is a wonderful book filled with emotion and adventure that will make you laugh, make you angry, and make you cry, but most of all is will make you pleased about the way you treat your animals.

A life altering book

I originally got this book out of the library, in part of planning a trip to Yellowstone and a desire to see its wolves. After only a few pages, I realized I was reading a book that was about so much more than wolves -- Ms. Askins writes brilliantly about conservation ethics, wildness, the politics of animal reintroductions, and living a commitment. The book was so good that I rushed out to buy my own copy, in part so I could underline all of the 'nuggets' of wisdom she serves up. This is a woman that I hope someday my daughter can meet - for she is a living example of what someone with vision, chutzpah, a good education, and perserverance can accomplish.

great enough to buy it for a friend

Renee Askins has written something (somewhat tangentially), about wolves--that truly translates into every other aspect of life--she's a brilliant and beautiful genius, and it will probably be ages before we realize her wisdom. For the time being, I am content to wander through her metaphors and images, just hoping that I discover their worth.

A Memoir of Working For Wolves

Wolves were eliminated from Yellowstone National Park by 1926. They were the only creatures banished from the preserve, because humans unrealistically feared them and the cattle damage they might do. As Americans became aware of what ecology was, more were able to accept that the missing wolves ought to be restored to the nature preserve, for they should have been preserved along with all the other creatures. Renée Askins would certainly not claim that she was the one to effect their restoration into Yellowstone, but she certainly deserves much of the credit. Her lovely memoir, _Shadow Mountain: A Memoir of Wolves, a Woman, and the Wild_ (Doubleday) not only tells about her involvement in this huge project, but also is her autobiography, taking in her upbringing, her lovers, and in many pages, her dogs. It is sweet and compelling reading.In 1980, Askins was a college student working at a wolf research facility in Indiana. She had a wolf pup thrust upon her to raise, and although she had plenty of experience with wild and domestic animals before, this was "the first time I truly began to face and fathom the capacity of another species." When the pup was taken from her, she was heartbroken. She sobbed, and (this is something she does quite a bit throughout the book), she howled. And she was answered by the pack, which "one by one, called out in the long, graceful wail that is the code of their species. Their own had been taken. I had no doubt they knew." (Also throughout the book is this sort of mystical anthropomorphic speculation, which may put some readers off, but which has served the author well.) In 1986, she founded the Wolf Fund. Returning wolves to Yellowstone was its one and only purpose. Much of the book is devoted to how she lobbied and cajoled bureaucrats and donors. It is a complicated story, but wolves were returned to the park, and the Wolf Fund, having achieved its goal, in contrast to other bureaucracies, simply shut itself down.Askins's delightful writing includes many non-wolf topics. She writes with feeling about a friend and a sister who died of cancer. She describes with amusement the activities of her dogs, and winds up at the Westminster Dog Show in New York, looking for an "apricot, teacup, powder puff Chinese Crested." She faces feral dogs in West Africa (by howling). In these episodes, and all others she includes here, she gracefully ties the themes back to her life with wolves and the lessons she has learned from working with them and for them. She has the good sense to realize that reinstating the wolves was a hopeful symbolic act, and that compared to other protections of endangered species, it was biologically insignificant. She is open about losses; some of the wolves have been deliberately killed, some in response to cattle depredation, although such instances have been few. And she realizes that with electronic monitor collars strapped on them, with a population "managed" rather than entirel

Its not about the wolf.

Askins has crafted a compelling story about examining our human relationship with the natural world. Ostensibly, the book describes the formation of the Wolf Fund, her single issue, streamlined, strategic environmental organization aimed at garnering grass roots support and applying political pressure to achieve the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park. And yet it is about so much more. She writes with candor and wit, wandering back and forth in time, highlighting the trail, effectively illustrating serendipitous twists of fate that ultimately influence her role in the attainment of this greater goal. It's her story, and yet, like any good writing, there is something universal here. Digging at the roots of her own motivation, she uncovers a philosophy for life. Askins herds the reader along with a mixture of dogged determination and poetic passion, feeding us cookies of wisdom along the way, plenty of food for thought. I hope we hear her howl again.