There are other universes out there. Some of them are even “here”. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, we catch a glimpse of one of them and we’re impacted. Way below the surface. Most of the time we don’t even notice what we’ve seen.

As I was driving home this evening, I’d just picked up Grandma’s hamburger and coffee at McDonald’s, a couple Roly-Poly sandwiches at, uh, Roly Poly(?) and picked up some stuff at Krogers. Dodged a maniac who didn’t know which way he was turning on Jiles Rd. and followed the line of cars heading home after work. It had to be around 8:00, but it was completely dark on this Oct. 9 day. After stopping for gas, I finally pulled off to our “main division” and went driving up the hills to our “sub”-division. I guess this used to be country here, a few miles from Kennesaw Mountain, but when I drive home, it’s house after house after house. Some wooded gullys and forest areas are about all that’s left of anything resembling primal in this neighborhood.

Our house is at the far end of the subdivision, up on a ridge overlooking one of the remaining gullys with a forest to the side. There’s a herd of deer that live down there and sometimes they get up among the houses looking for food or trying to get away from barking dogs. Other times I watch them grazing from the back deck. We have rabbits and chipmunks too, and it’s pretty nice for suburbia.

As I drove slowly down into our cul-de-sac at the end, I was going especially slow because you never know when you’ll see a kid or a pet running across the road, and it was real dark. As I turned into the cul-de-sac, and my headlights swung past the neighbor’s house I saw something big moving fast.

It was running out of the neighbor’s yard into my headlights and for a brief instant it stared me down. At first I thought deer, but it wasn’t a deer. It looked a little like a huge german shepard, but it was “rough” and the ears were too big. Then it was gone. Stunned, I pulled into my driveway and got out of the car.

I walked back about twenty yards and looked up the hill that separates our property from the woods. At the top of the hill was the wolf, staring down at me. I don’t know how long we stared at each other. It seemed like a long time. Actually, it seemed like there was no time. I stared into its eyes, and it stared back. During that eternity, thousands of years of fairy tales and mythology ran through my soul. There’s something about a wolf.

Later, I looked over at the neighbor’s house and saw why the animal had been in their yard. They have a nice solid glass outer door, and often they have the thick wooden front door inside it, open to let the outdoors “in” through the glass door. And usually there’s a small little terrier or “fifi” dog staring out the glass door. Sure enough, the little terrier was again at the door, probably looking fairly tasty to the wolf, or coyote, or whatever I’d seen.

There’s something about a wolf.