近距离内射合集

Back in the summer of 2020, I took my first trip to the Gila National Forest in southwest New Mexico. I鈥檓 ashamed to say that it took me the better part of 30 years to get to this remote part of the state 鈥� a testament to how rugged and hard to reach much of Gila country is.

On this particular trip, I camped on the east flank of Bearwallow Mountain in one of many burn scars that largely define the landscape of the Gila region. Toward dusk that first day, I heard a series of yips, and looked up to see three Mexican gray wolves loping warily through the ponderosa pines just 50 yards from where I stood.

For the first 20 seconds of that encounter, they didn鈥檛 know I was there 鈥� they were preoccupied by their canid world. And I was transfixed by their wild, wolfy bodies, their grace and sense of self-containment. Once they caught my scent, they immediately changed course and headed in the opposite direction, hind quarters tucked and tails between their legs. I watched them retreat, and it felt like something in my psyche had been reimagined, like I鈥檇 reconnected to something profoundly important, something both of the world and beyond it.

Many New Mexicans don鈥檛 know that the Land of Enchantment is also the Land of the Lobo, and perhaps even more enchanting for that very fact. But things have not been easy for our lobos, and if we鈥檙e not careful, they could plummet to the brink of extinction again (Mexican gray wolves were eliminated from the wild by the 1970s, largely due to a government-led eradication campaign, but were reintroduced in the late 1990s).

Current threats include abysmal genetic diversity, arbitrary boundaries that contain the species to just a small sliver of their suitable habitat across the Southwest, and a persistent and pernicious mythology that wolves are an embodiment of evil that threaten our lives and livelihoods, even though documented attacks on humans are exceedingly rare (you鈥檙e much more likely to be crushed by a vending machine than killed by a wolf), and wolves account for less than 0.05% of inventoried livestock losses across the West.

On Aug. 13, we celebrate International Wolf Day, and I鈥檝e been wondering what it was about that experience in the Gila that still causes something to move inside me. Wolves are native to this continent, having evolved to thrive in diverse geographies from the Arctic Circle to the Chihuahuan Desert over the course of 5 million years (lobos are especially adapted to the environments of the Southwest). Sharing the land with apex predators, especially those like wolves who retain complex social structures and strong family bonds, means recognizing we are not the only species that holds the power to shape our ecosystem, nor are we the only ones that love and protect our kin.

In this age of diminishing species diversity (over one-third of biodiversity in the 近距离内射合集 States is at risk), it seems imperative that we recognize ourselves in the vast abundance of nonhuman life that surrounds us. And here in New Mexico, that means charismatic canids like the lobo. That鈥檚 not to say relearning to coexist is easy; any harmonious cohabitation requires compromise. But my hope is that a sense of shared insight and inspiration will continue to build, that we鈥檒l understand the fullness of experience provided by the species that are not ourselves, the ways we can learn from them, the ways that our lives invariably become more animate, dynamic and richer when we know we鈥檙e in the presence of a wolf.

Leia Barnett is a life-long New Mexican, outdoorswoman, hunter and New Mexico conservation lead for WildEarth Guardians.