Media Mix

Published Sunday, February 01, 2009 12:16 AM

The Daily Coyote:
A story of love, survival, and trust in the wilds of Wyoming
by Shreve Stockton 

Shreve Stockton was moving across the country in 2005 from San Francisco back to her love, New York City, on her Vespa, alone, when she rode into Wyoming and immediately fell in love. She was, as she writes, "magnetized to the land." The overwhelming beauty of the mountains and vastness caused a feeling so strong she felt she couldn't bear to leave.

But Shreve continued on with her trip and, once back in New York City, knew she had to return to Wyoming—to the place where she had spent one day. Banking only on her innate love of the land, and on her life-long desire for freedom and to explore and to see, Shreve left the city life she had known and loved, and moved to a tiny, unfamiliar town in Wyoming.

This drastic change alone makes for a fascinating story, but it is only the beginning of the book, and of Shreve's account of her new life in the country. Not long after Shreve befriends a cowboy—whose job is to kill predatory coyotes, a common pastime and necessity in ranch country—one coyote pup is spared by the cowboy and is give to her as a gift. It's a compulsion he can't explain, and Shreve must decide what to do with it. She decides to keep it.

The Daily Coyote chronicles Shreve's first year with Charlie the coyote, and is illustrated with her own beautiful, daily photographs (which first started primarily as a photo blog at DailyCoyote.net and still continues on a several-month delay). It's about co-existence—an intriguing experiment in lovingly and consciously raising a wild animal among humans, plus Shreve's tough-guy tomcat Eli (the two of which—cat and coyote—form a loveable, brotherly relationship). It is life in the wild, with the wild, and a constant test of both Shreve's and Charlie's freedom, trust, loyalty and love.

by tinadh
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