Our theme for the month of October is “states.”
When I was a child, graphics that isolated Alaska’s land mass and placed it next to Hawaii in the bottom-left corner of the U.S. map put me under the assumption that Alaska was an island. While I can happily report I was emancipated from that misconception many years ago, a shroud of mystery has continued to cloak this non-contiguous state into my adult life.
I’ve slowly been increasing my amount of friends who grew up on “the last frontier.” To date, I am up to…*checks notes*…two. These friendships have begun to lift that mysterious shroud, thread by thread. I’ve gathered reports on the day-to-day operations of family fishing boats, reviewed the personally captured videos of grizzlies chasing fish through streams, charted mental maps for birth plans between rural hospital systems—but most memorably, I have been introduced to the story of Romeo the wolf, the unexpected friend that captured the hearts of Juneau residents at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
Romeo was a gray wolf, the presumed final survivor of his pack. He was first seen roaming the outskirts of Juneau in 2003, slowly venturing further and further into spaces inhabited by humans. While initially wary, the denizens of Juneau quickly began to observe with surprise that this wild wolf was not venturing in to scavenge, hunt, or be fed. He came to play.
Romeo would frolic with puppies in the snow. He built rapport with certain humans over time, the lucky and honored chosen getting to play fetch with him if he chose to present his scavenged toys as an offering to their friendship. Instead of ushering their children away, parents even began to feel comfortable letting their offspring share a relatively close proximity to Romeo when he would approach. Though my friend Philip, who introduced me to Romeo’s story, acknowledged that the wolf did carry away “just one” pug.
This beautiful friendship between the untamed and domesticated lasted for six years, but was cut short when Romeo was illegally killed by out-of-state poachers in 2009. The city came together and saw the prosecution of the guilty parties a year later. Fines were given, licenses were revoked, jail time was suspended, and Romeo’s story is now well documented in books, plaques, and musical tributes. Most notable among these is wildlife photographer Nick Jans’s book A Wolf Called Romeo.
While I haven’t read his book, I skimmed through a recorded lecture Jans gave on Romeo at Egan Library. I gleaned more information about certain Alaskan communities in moments such as when Jans’s rhetorical question, “What do you think would have happened if this wolf had showed up outside of Fairbanks?” is met by a hearty laugh from an eager audience member. But the key line that strikes through the fizzy, rasping video recording is Jans’s proclamation that, “[The story of Romeo] wasn’t a tragedy, it was a triumph.”
What prompted a wolf, a classic archetype for the untamed and wild, to freely give his trust to a group of creatures he had no prior relationship with? What prompted a community of humans, a race whose dominant cultures built themselves on the principles of conquest and subjugation, to readily call a being who they did not control a friend? I could muse on a recognition of companionship as a survival instinct, or a God-breathed hardwiring that this group of Alaskan citizens had for relationship with all of Creation. Or, perhaps, Trinitarian overflow into an innate desire for community that, yes, wolves too, get to experience (we’re only a few weeks past the Feast of St. Francis, after all)! But hardwired or not, all the protagonists in this triumphant tale made a choice: to approach the unknown with openness, to humbly bring the consistency of their presence, and to participate in a shared joy—and in the case of “just one” pug owner, a choice to be prepared for sacrifice.
Jans suggests that Romeo’s story could only have unfolded in Juneau compared to another Alaskan city, let alone in one of the continental forty-eight states. Maybe there is something truly special about that region of Alaska. But I hope to prove Jans wrong and replicate that exceptionality in Michigan, and in whatever other states life may give me as a future mailing address. Where art thou, Romeo? Perhaps he will not take the shape of a wolf when I meet him, but he will be wherever I am faced with the same choice that those Juneau residents faced in 2003.
While he is a new friend to me, I am grateful for Romeo and those who have honored his story by sharing it. As Jans points out, “There’s a coffee and a beer named after this wolf in a town that likes its coffee and beer…and that’s probably the highest honor of all.”
Luke Brandsen graduated in 2019 and uses his business/HR degree to inform directing mission-focused programs. He currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he squints at the players on his bootleg soccer stream, breaks guitar strings, and desperately tries to recall where the last D&D session he ran left off.
