This piece is part of a new Sequencer series about wolves. Read the companion essay for more.

In Adam Weymouth’s new book, Lone Wolf: Walking the Line Between Civilization and Wildness, the author follows GPS coordinates laid 10 years prior by Slavc, a Slovenian wolf who ventured 2,000 kilometers across to Italy. Weymouth walks the path to understand Europe through Slavc’s eyes. 

I came across this book while reading a different wolf book. Aside from Weymouth’s prose, what struck me was just how rich of a story we can get from one individual wolf. Slavc’s journey is a love story, according to Weymouth. Before dying about 3 years ago, the wolf found a mate (Juliet) and had dozens of pups. “Lone Wolf” explores the fear, hatred, love, and scientific curiosity that wolves imbue wherever they settle. And the book does so in a remarkable way. Weymouth quite literally sees, hears, and smells the cues that may have guided the famous wolf’s decisions. 

Europe’s wolf population has bounced back significantly thanks to the adaptability of wolves like Slavc. The long journey taught Weymouth lessons about a wolf’s needs, as well as his own. It also led him to meet farmers and hunters in European villages that feared a resurgence of wild wolves. Similar anxieties abound in U.S. wolf politics. Weymouth draws important parallels between people’s attitudes towards large carnivores and their attitudes towards migrants. Lone Wolf is currently shortlisted for the United Kingdom’s top award for non-fiction, the Bailie Gifford Prize.

Weymouth told Sequencer about why political parties sway voters with wolves, and the complexities we must consider when coexisting with wolves. 

(If you purchase the book through our affiliate link, Sequencer receives a small portion.)

What surprised you on this journey?

Slavc has been quite well studied. There are a lot of papers about him. But no one had done a journey like this, following the map that he had made. At the beginning, transferring all his coordinates onto the maps that I had in my bag, you'd realize that although it seemed like this quite linear journey, there were all these places where he would have a change of heart suddenly go off on a completely different compass bearing, turn around, sort of dawdle for a bit. And it wasn't until I started doing the journey that a lot of those choices started to make sense. I'd get to a place where he'd suddenly shot off in a different direction. I'd realize when I stand here I can hear the highway for the first time. Or I can see the planes taking off from Ljubljana airport. Or I'd gotten to a mountain pass and in winter with six meters of snow, this would be completely inaccessible. Or I'd come up to a river, and where he’s come from he would never have seen the river in his life. 

I really tried not to anthropomorphize this animal, but I, however imperfectly, started to get a sense of how he was making his choices.