Lone Wolf: Walking the Line Between Civilization and Wildness
Thoughtful, nuanced and empathetic ... Weymouth listens with impressive open-mindedness to the people he meets along the way ... Fascinating though the issues are, you read Weymouth for the travel writing. His pen portraits are vivid and acute ... A lyrical account of a young Italian couple who have taken up shepherding, in the shadow of the wolves’ territory, makes you long to know them, and maybe to be them ... He does not romanticise the world, though, or the wolf—or himself. Among travel and nature writers, that is rare restraint ... A spoiler would be unfair, but the [last] moment is handled with extraordinary delicacy, making an utterly fitting conclusion to a very fine book.
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In this moving, vivid account, Weymouth follows Slavc’s 635 GPS points across central Europe. An adventurer with a deep feeling for nature and animals, he encounters the spectrum of human attitudes towards wolves, from farmers and politicians intent on their extermination to academics devoted to their preservation ... Weymouth’s gift for description, especially of landscapes, is evident on almost every page.
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Weymouth is an uncommon brand of travel writer, weaving natural history with culture and politics ... Lone Wolf is much more than the story of Slavc: It is a vehicle for Weymouth to trace the fault lines splintering Europe and to examine how people respond when confronted by unwelcome change ... With so much modern wildlife science done remotely via GPS collars and satellite imagery, it’s refreshing to simply take in the landscapes and cultures of Southern Europe with Weymouth as our guide. He carefully picks at the Gordian knot linking wolves and rural communities, teases out nuances, and tells a complex story of a world in transition ... To observe and absorb the natural-human interface, as Weymouth does, is an art, one that would benefit those on both sides of the wolf divide.
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