My Heart is a Yellow Stone

My partner is (not?) the wolf of my emotional ecosystem.

Dear reader,

I know I said I was taking January off, and I meant it, but the truth is I miss you.

Sometimes people ask how I know when to write. With the holidays behind us, and all the foisted mania they bring, my beloved radio stations are back to their usual noise. This morning, while driving down the hill to check the surf, “My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion started playing. I was moved to tears. Tears mean it is time to write.

Last Wednesday, T. and I parted ways for an undefined window of four-to-six weeks. I haven’t talked to him since. He’s migrating south for early winter warmth and solitude, while I remain at home to continue my projects.

Space is good, but this is the longest space sans contact I have ever taken with a partner. I feel like I’m being tested. My thoughts fill the quiet left by his absence. Some are “open-palm” thoughts, calm and loving, like I hope he is safe and resting. Others feel like clenched fists. They are dysregulating in their paranoia and delusion. Perhaps space is only good if you like exercises in faith.

Space is good, I tell myself, especially since I am in the process of actualizing my dreams, and also need rest from doing so. Space is good, because since moving to the ranch I see how my ever-growing personal empowerment mirrors my willingness to dismantle imposed relationship hierarchies. This is an opportunity to liberate myself, to experiment with new forms of presence and absence. I shouldn’t be afraid of it. But a part of me is.

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One semester in college, I took an ecology class where I learned about “trophic cascade” — the impact to an ecosystem when introducing or removing a predator at the top of the food chain. The extermination and subsequent reintroduction of the gray wolf in Yellowstone National Park is the most commonly used example to illustrate this theory of interconnectivity.

Wolves once roamed the northern region of the United States by the thousands. Westward expansion in the 1800s eliminated much of their usual prey and introduced domesticated animals to the food chain. Ranchers and early homesteaders didn’t like it when wolves — and other predators like bears and cougars and coyotes — made prey of their herds, so predator control was encouraged from the late 1800s to the early 1900s.

Yellowstone National Park was established in 1872, spanning  2,221,766 acres across Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. Over the next 50 years, hundreds of wolves were killed within the park’s borders. The last Yellowstone wolf pack was annihilated during 1926, being a common story at that time. By the middle of the twentieth century, wolves were scarce across the entire continental United States.

At the turn of the century, it wasn’t understood that killing the wolves would ripple instability into the entire ecosystem, but that’s exactly what happened. It took a while to notice, but without the wolves, a once balanced ecosystem slowly went to shit. The list of consequences is long, but basically the changes in the food chain meant too much of one species and not enough of others, fewer trees and water dams, more soil erosion, barren rivers. It was assumed that removing the top predators meant more food for other, more “desirable” animals, but in fact the inverse happened and everybody started to go hungry.

In 1974, the gray wolf was listed as an endangered species in the United States, but it wasn’t until 1995 that 31 gray wolves from western Canada were relocated to Yellowstone as part of a recovery initiative. The northern Yellowstone elk population that increased dramatically without the wolves has been in decline since their reintroduction, which is maybe why there’s been a welcome resurgence of willow and aspen trees, too.¹

I’ve been filtering through other people’s thoughts regarding mine and T.’s time apart. I’ve learned that most of my friends believe calling or texting is a bare minimum commitment for healthy partnerships, each and every day. But why? Who decided that’s what love or devotion looks like? Does the absence of telecommunication mean that something is wrong or missing in that love? Does accepting a lack of contact fail to meet the standard of devotion?

It’s become clear that communicating on the telephone can no longer be a point of reference for how I measure the health of my current relationship. Given that I don’t have any friends whose partners have a flip phone — or the need to be alone in the world for a handful of weeks each year — to them my circumstances feel radical. It feels radical to me, too, but I’m working on it.

Friends have told me I don’t have to stretch myself into a person who is okay with this much space. I know that, but there’s something potent in giving the one I love what they need, especially when I want something different. Can I learn to rest easy in this disconnect, if only for a little while?

I started thinking about the wolves of Yellowstone because T. has removed himself from my current emotional ecosystem. This is an opportunity to figure out exactly how much I have (or have not) made him the apex predator of my wants and fears, of my confidence, of my mental health. I know that we need each other and I’ll defend interdependence and non-separateness until my last breath. I am (mostly) at peace with my need for T. And yet, I want to be the wolf, the keeper of balance in my own life, the one who decides which variables maintain its vibrance.

T.’s departure has induced an unprecedented relationship withdrawal, which is scary, but not only in the sense of loneliness. It also signifies a new chapter in my life. His work in my studio is done, hence his reprieve in Baja, following three months of designing and fabricating four cabinets, two divider walls, a bookshelf, and sixteen flat file drawers. He transformed bare bones into a bodacious, inspirational bod. My ROCK SHOP’s remaining manifestation is up to me now. 

ROCK SHOP is my studio space on the central coast, but it’s also about to become a public-facing commercial storefront where eventually people will walk in, and talk to me, and buy shit (or not). And fuck, that’s terrifying. 

Paper remains taped to the windows, obscuring my progress inside. People often walk by and talk about me, not knowing I can hear them. It doesn’t matter what’s said — being physically perceived out in the wild makes me want to hide. It’s nothing like being seen online. 

Yesterday was my first Monday working in my ROCK SHOP without T. to help hang the paper towel dispenser, or sand the wooden sofa we dragged in from the curb last September. I’m close to the finish line, and yet there is still so much to do. Halfway through the day, I phoned a friend to soothe me from catastrophizing that T. must have another relationship and is secretly raising a family in Mulegé. This was not being the wolf.

Sometimes I can see my anxiety for what it is, but other times I project it onto the low-hanging fruit of my circumstances — like space from T. — just so I have somewhere to put it. 

In the twilight of yesterday, while sitting on the toilet with the door open, I noticed T.’s bicycle propped up against the wall, hidden behind a shelf. With my pants around my ankles, I realized that the man who leaves his bike behind in the room of our dreams is not going to betray me, at least not without betraying himself too.

I realized that he trusts me, not just to look after his things, but to be here when he comes back. I looked out into the rest of the room and saw what is true: maybe we don’t send texts every day, but we exchange ideas and share a vocation. To quote my landmate Ryan, “There are other ways in which shit is awesome.” 

I asked Charlie, another member of our pack, to bring over his drill. I finished sanding the sofa. I took a solitary walk. I fed myself. I talked with Scott and Mar. I turned my phone off. I read myself to sleep. Wolf, maybe.

Love,

Anna

1. All wolf-related information was gathered online from the National Park Service, Wolf Park, Mission:Wolf, and the Grey Wolf Conservation websites.