Medicine of the Wolf Page #5

made a click with my three-dollar

plastic Argus camera,

I was like, "wow, that's amazing."

Then I got a picture back a week later.

You take it to the drugstore... black

and white film, it's a process,

they come back with a little print,

and magic.

I shot the fox.

I captured, there's my trophy.

There's my bragging point.

I don't have a fox skin,

I have a photograph.

This is even better.

I can put it on the wall

and the fox is still alive.

It didn't take long.

From that moment on,

it was a different story.

And I'm still doing the same thing.

I'm still a hunter.

I'm... I'm still tricking

animals, sneaking up on them.

Jim had met Will Steger in the 80's,

and the two embarked on a well-known

expedition to the north pole.

Jim had heard about the white

wolf not being afraid of man,

and became fascinated with an idea

of a similar mission to the arctic.

And the unique opportunity to document,

and live with wolves in the wild.

Less than 500 Miles from the north pole

lies Canada's most distant frontier,

Ellesmere island.

Only someone with a passion for wolves

would dream of tracking them

into this desolate land.

One such person is

photographer Jim Brandenburg.

Wolves have always

been a favorite animal of mine,

and I suppose one of the reasons

they're my favorite animal

is because they're so intelligent.

That intelligence makes it, uh...

nearly impossible to film them

in a more conventional place,

say in the forested areas.

And for some reason these arctic wolves

have... have got a quality about them

where they tolerated us very well,

and it became clear

that it would make a wonderful story.

In 1986, Jim's white wolf premiered

at the Sundance film festival and

won numerous prestigious awards.

White wolf also became

a best-selling book,

and was the cover story

for the national geographic magazine.

When I was involved in that,

I felt this is the

highlight of my career,

I will never equal it,

except one thing maybe.

If a bunch of aliens had

popped down on my property

and said, "Jim, come with us

on our spaceship,

we're gonna go off to another planet."

I'm... I'm kidding.

It sounds funny,

this is my... this is a

true conception I thought,

when I was in the middle of

the white wolf experience,

I thought, I will never equal this,

and I was right.

I've never equaled it since.

Our tent, in research,

was within a five-minute walk

of the den.

Lived right with them, as a family.

We had problems with the white wolves

coming stealing

our stuff out of the tent.

So, it's very different than here,

the wolves up there were

kind of blase about humans.

To see a wolf here, back

in those days, was rare.

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