Wolverine Tracks: On the Trail of Memory and Meaning in the Wild

In this “book of great power and tenderness” (Charles Foster), a quest for an elusive animal reveals the comfort of nature in a changing, uncertain world.

“Deeply philosophical, addressing the questions that we are all pondering about our place in this world and the degree to which we are part of nature. A book for your bedside table.”—Catherine Raven, author of the New York Times bestseller Fox & I

Fifty years after Dag O. Hessen encounters wolverine tracks on a ski trip with his father and follows them until they disappear down a steep passage, he’s back to search for the animal that escaped him. His father is long gone but the mountains are still there—and somewhere out there is a wolverine, an elusive creature of myth and mystery. In Hessen’s imagination, the wolverine is wilderness in animal form, representing everything lost to us in a nature that is being steadily reduced to a tame vestige of its former self. Wolverines have a reputation as vicious gluttons: they’ve been known to kill a reindeer, bite its head off, and then hang it high up in a tree like a trophy. Yet wolverines can also be shy and playful, skidding down slopes and scaling mountain peaks for no apparent reason—perhaps, like humans, just to enjoy the view.

Over the course of a year, Hessen returns to the mountains in every season, but, since the passing of his father and sister, it’s no longer just a wolverine that he seeks. As Hessen walks and skis over peaks and valleys on the wolverine’s trail, spending his nights in silence with only the starry skies for company, he shares his biologist’s deep knowledge of flora and fauna through the changing seasons and in a changing climate. He also draws on literary explorations of humans and nature, wildness versus civilization, and, of course, wolverines, referencing writers including Thoreau, E. O. Wilson, Jon Krakauer, and Kerstin Ekman.

Wolverine Tracks is a story about time passing, about change and loss in nature and in Hessen’s own life. It’s also a book about what it means to be human in our tumultuous world, and the joy and power of being in nature.

Dag O. Hessen is a Norwegian writer and biologist whose writing lies at the crossroads of biology and philosophy. He has written many scientific works as well as popular science books about evolution, biology, and the environment. Hessen is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and has received several awards for his promotion of popular science.