“Even a man who is pure of heart and says his prayers by night
can become a wolf, when the wolfbane blooms
and the autumn moon is bright.” (from the first Wolfman movie)

I can’t remember when I became a werewolf. Looking back, I see a few staggered steps, like tracks in the snow, lurching from man to wolf and back again. There is no cause and effect, merely history, which can be told so many different ways.

When I was a child, I had a dream. It began with me willing myself to fly. I soared over my neighborhood with delight. Soon, the force of will necessary to fly drained me and I began to descend, despite my will. In the slow descent, I flew lower into a dark woods and, at the moment of greatest fear of what lurked within, I awoke. This dream recurred many times until I was past 10 years of age. I think the dream portended changes to come.

In my teens, I found my pack. We stalked the streets and parks of Northern Virginia. To varying degrees, we found and created ourselves, as the pack and as individuals. They must have been the first to see my wolf nature emerge. I watched werewolf movies. I read Steppenwolf – auf deutsch sogar. I identified with the man uneasily on the edge of his society. At times, I lost my hold on humanity, which was a terrible sight, I know, and yet, my friends kept me in the pack, for which I’m grateful still. Eventually, the notion that “Mark is a werewolf” didn’t seem the least bit absurd – simply a statement of fact known to those who needed to know.

It was the pack that brought home my eventual mate the night before Halloween, 1981. Merri Rudd stepped into our den with wise shyness. She sniffed the air and told me she had been a dog in a former life. (I don’t recall when I first told her I’d been a wolf in the current one.) I followed her into uncharted territory, a land with its own wolves. In a few days, we’ll howl at the full moon for what could be the 364th time – a year of full moons.

At times, I think the wolf within crawled out from under my skin to become my totem, my animus, my daemon, if you will. The old man still snaps but his teeth are loose and dull. As much as ever, I linger on the doorstep of a large community, not sure I dare step over into the firelight, no matter how welcome I would be. But, from the edge, it looks lovely.

[reposted from 10/31/2015]

Friday night, Halloween weekend, 1981, Robert Coontz brought someone new home for dinner. I stood in the living room to meet her and she walked around the far side of the coffee table, nose in the air. She wasn’t avoiding me (she said), just sniffing her surroundings, having been a dog in a former life. That was my introduction to Merri Rudd, my belovéd-to-be.

[photo: mjh & MR in Landmark Shopping Center photo machine, Alexandria, VA, January 1984.]