"Morning Journey" © 2012  ~ watercolor by Carol E. Fairbanks

Wild and Free

The wolf is the true spirit of the free and unspoiled wilderness....the symbol of nature that is not controlled by man. In looking at our treatment and killing of wolves in the wilderness, it is clear that we don't understand the function of wolves in the scheme of living things. And we are afraid of what we cannot control. Dayton Duncan, author and editor of the National Park series, says that the ancestors of the wild and free wolves of today are those of the pack who refused to come into the campfire circle and join mankind.  Those of the pack that did come into the campfire became man's most loyal companions, and they are the ancestors of today's dogs. Dayton says, "We have never forgiven the pack who refused to come into the campfire and yield to man's control."

Like the wolves, humans once roamed wild and free living in accordance with the laws of nature.  We lived and died, respecting the elements and existing in harmony with the seasons.  But today, we see wild nature as somehow supernatural, something beyond our physical ways of perceiving and relating to life.  Author, John Biofield in his book, I Ching: the Book of Change, writes, "Intuition is no more a supernatural gift than the powers of walking, running and jumping; but, like them, its full development requires regular exercise."

So as the Wild Woman Walker, I am now flexing my "wild nature"!  I painted this caring watercolor portrait of wolves to show that, like them, I, too, am strengthening the "muscles" of my intuition.  To do that I must be free, untethered by the expectations that society puts upon me....moving through my life experience in harmony with the natural laws, as an integral part of all life on earth.  I look to those laws of nature, both as manifested in the natural world and as expressed within my own intuition, and see a wisdom beyond my analytical, judgmental mind. I walk through the woods and feel the truth of all things beyond time and finite words. And as I paint and draw what I experience, my images reflect back to me a truth that I know.  The part of me that knows who I AM is finally free to live her dream, as a wild and free woman.