A Call to the Wild: Folk Tales of the Wolf by Chris Salisbury

In May while I was in Europe for the 1st time, doing some work and hanging out with friends I was taken to a book store in Bath. A sweet bookstore where my friend Jamie and I wandered around hunting for treasure. Of course I can always find treasure in bookstores. But because I was traveling and had to be careful about the weight of my suitcase i was extra careful not to go crazy.

The 1st book I found was a small book of River Poems. I liked that I was in Bath, a place of the sacred waters, in a Water Year (according to the Dagara Cosmology) as a Water Spirit. You can't make this shit up. I read a couple of the poems on the plane on the way home and am savoring a poem when I feel called.

The second book I found has captured my spirit. It is called Folk Tales of the Wolf By Chris Salisbury. He happens to be a friend of Jamie's. It caught my attention for two reasons, first because I have been interested in learning more myths and tells because I so believe in the power of stories to transform us. And second because the foreword was written by Bill Plotkin and I love his work.

In this book about Wolves Chris invites us to reclaim some of our own wildness through a reclaiming of human and wolf relationships before they were pushed to the edges of the wild to time when humans and wolves lived side by side, even hunting together.

He arranges this book in a unique way. Setting up the sections with tells of the Blue Wolf, the Black Wolf, the White Wolf, the Grey Wolf, and then the Opaque Wolf.

I am so taken by this book that I couldn't even wait until I finished it to share it with you. When I do finish it I am going to see if Chris will be willing to come on my podcast to talk about it.

Some quotes that I love:

• “Read a story and it goes from the eye to the brain. Tell a story and it goes from the mouth to the heart “

• "I offer every story here with respect to the geniusand wisdom of the culture from which it came. It's one of the ways cultures are shared. In this way, the emphasis is very much on gift-giving, and the sharing of human culture, and offered as enrichment. The underlying principle in this tradition is that because it's not a script there's no copyright. Authorship is gained by the process of re-presenting the material, which changes it, and which is one of the reasons many stories gain immortality, in a constantly evolving and emergent continuum."

• "The evening sun warmed their fur, and they looked down on a beautiful world, and for a while, they were at peace.

While I was preparing to write this I discovered another book that he wrote. I ordered it immediately.

FolkTales of the Night

If you finish this one 1st, let me know what you think.

Enjoy,

Quanita