One night I woke up and there were two wolves in my room, sitting beside my bed. 

Only, it wasn’t my bed, exactly - it was a pallet of sorts, piled with blankets. And it wasn’t my room. The low, warm light that filled the space cast shadows on what appeared to be walls of brownish earth or clay, very dry and solid. On the right a steep flight of stairs of this same packed and shaped mud, a wall on one side and no railing on the other, led upwards to the entrance. In descending these steps earlier, I remembered, I had been quite careful; I was anxious to escape all the noise and revelry above - even the memory of it blessedly fading with each step - but I didn’t want to fall.  I was also very tired and the low bed set up against the back wall certainly looked inviting - it seemed to me that the most sensible thing to do was snuggle into the blankets and fall warmly and soundly asleep. So I did.

And there I stayed until I heard growling, turned over and saw two wolves sitting by my bed. Looking at me. Well, that’s not quite true - they were both sitting, but only one wolf, the snarling and snapping one, was facing me. The other was calmly, even regally, staring far off into the distance.

As I was practically on the floor, when I sat up, crossed my legs and gathered a blanket over my shoulders, we - the wolves and I - were almost eye to eye. Strangely, I was not the least bit frightened. I divided my attention between the two; the one that was looking off into the distance was the more puzzling to me… there was nothing there that I could see, but whatever it was looking at was not close by. After a brief stare, it paid no attention at all to me, or to the other wolf - whereas that one, the fur on its neck ruffed and just continuously snapping and growling, baring its big teeth, never took its eyes off of me.  We stayed in this tableau for minutes or days, nothing changing, just me and these improbable creatures, sharing whatever it was we were sharing. Lessons, perhaps.

Then I woke up. For real, this time. 

Well! What do you do with a dream like that? It’s been about eight years now, and I’m still working on it. I’ve had help - later that same day I told a friend about the dream and he right away said, "Nanette… did you get the feeling that they were you?" That question surprised me because, no, it had not at all occurred to me that the wolves were me, or representative of me, in any way. I mean, canines! Growling ones, no less. If it had been wild felines, tigers or something, I could see it. Thinking it over, though - I am terrified of dogs that I don’t know (even little yipping nippers can get my heart racing if I come across them suddenly), yet I felt no fear at all with not only two large wild canines sitting by my bed, but with one in a very bad mood. So, maybe they were me. But, now what?

I’ve thought of my friend’s question as, over the years, I’ve come across variations of this purported Cherokee legend, -

The Two Wolves

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, ‘My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all..

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt,
resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence,
empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.’

The grand son thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: ‘Which wolf wins?’

The old Cherokee simply replied, ‘The one you feed.’

So, were the wolves me and if the dream was trying to tell me anything at all, was it this? Maybe. I’ve tried to fit this in with both the feelings in the dream and with my own personality (after all, who wants to say one knows more than an ancient wise person?) and I just can’t quite do it. It’s a wonderful legend and I can see truths - but, somehow, I’ve never felt that that’s it. The Explanation.

Or, at least, that that was the end - of the dream or my lessons from it, so to speak. I had more thinking to do before I could come up with something that was a better fit.

More on that in the next bit of navel gazing.