What to expect from Refuge with Wolves
I'll be drawing on insights gleaned from over five years researching and reporting in rural eastern North Carolina, home to four of my state's five poorest counties and also the last place on Earth where critically endangered red wolves still live wild. It’s a complex and beautiful place, just west of multi-million dollar beach houses on the Outer Banks, and a microcosm of the challenges and divisions plaguing this country and the world.
I’ve been focused on the attempted recovery of this particular exceedingly rare and vulnerable animal because I wanted to follow the fight in real time, to move beyond the abstraction of a species becoming extinct and get specific, documenting the tragedy—and the triumph—as it unfolds, with all the accompanying complexity and challenges. I set out wanting to witness the process of attempted re-wilding on the ground, intimately, warts and all; to get perspective from those involved in trying to save endangered animals, as well as those who believe they aren’t worth trying to save. In a larger sense, the investigation I am undertaking is perhaps a means of confronting my own mortality, perceived lack of agency, and struggle to answer the question: what can I do to live rightly in this world?
To be clear, this SubStack will be about much more than wolves: it’s for anyone seeking unflinchingly honest stories about perseverance in dark times; anyone inspired by people fighting to save things in danger of disappearing, and of the steady, noble work of folks toiling in the conservation trenches. Anyone troubled and mystified by the ever-deepening ideological chasm in this country, or the seemingly impossible yet utterly necessary concept of coexisting. I hope you might find some solace here, or at least food for thought, and I look forward to conversations to come!
What You’ll Get as a Subscriber:
Still getting the hang of this platform (as of Feb 2025) so bear with me as I continue to dial it in! The plan is as follows:
weekly posts (I’m aiming for Monday afternoons) relating broadly to ideas of wildness, freedom, recovery and/or survival, which I hope might inspire you to perhaps reflect, share, or respond with thoughts or questions or ideas of your own.
Weekly subscriber “bonus content” (on Fridays): miscellaneous recommendations and/or a roundup of good things that might inspire laughter, hope, fulfillment, etc.
Future guest posts and Q&A’s with amazing writers and folks I’ve come to know through over two decades of writing, research and editing, centered around those working tirelessly in the conservation trenches and lessons they’ve learned about resilience and hope.
About Me
These days, I enjoy delving headlong into exploring the topics I’m most afraid of or puzzled by, and that feel most crucial: violence, environmental degradation, the hazards of neglect. My fiction, essays, and reported pieces have appeared in outlets such as Vox, Harvard Review, National Geographic, Huffington Post, Salon, and Electric Literature, among many others. I’ve lived in and written about places as varied as Sicily, Hong Kong, and Arkansas, and am now based in North Carolina.
2503F, aka “Amelia” spotted in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge just a few days ago (2/2025). Photo by James Ford, @wildlifeofVB
