It was November 1989. I had gone on a semester study abroad program to Yunnan Province, in far southwestern China as a senior at Colorado State University, using a credit-exchange program offered via San Francisco State University in order to get some academic credits for the 3 month long excursion. The purpose of the trip was to do some forestry and ecological studies in the region with a group of Chinese and American researchers and students. The first part of the study was to compare the differences in forest structure and species composition between virgin primary subtropical broadleaf evergreen forest, and secondary forest that had been cut 50 to 80 years before, but which was recovering.
The second part of the study was to document 50 to 60 years of environmental changes from historic photographs taken by an Austrian-American botanist and explorer named Joseph Rock, who extensively documented the flora of the region in the 1920s with accurately described when and where each photo was taken. Rock’s attention to detail in naming the sites of his photos made it possible to retrace some of his steps, get to the spots near or exactly where he stood, and see what changes in the landscape had occurred, such as forest cover, agriculture, or urbanization. This was important because Yunnan Province is one of China’s most biologically rich regions, and back in 1989 very little was known about the region in terms of what had happened in the years between the 1930s and the mid 1980s, when the entire country was more or less closed to outsiders of all types.
While some parts of China, mainly large cities, had started to open up to foreigners as early as the 1970s, places like remote, mountainous Yunnan were still closed in 1989 aside from a handful of larger cities such as the capital of Kunming and select tourist areas. We had to obtain special permission to travel to our various study areas, which was no small task. And while this meant that pretty much anyone under the age of 50 to 60 had never seen a “white ghost person” (like myself) before, leading to a number of interesting experiences and insights that I had not previously considered, those stories aren’t the purpose of this post. The animal is.
One of the highest mountains in Yunnan Province is Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, Yulong Xueshan in Chinese, standing 18,360 feet (5,596 meters) tall and capped with glaciers. Joseph Rock spent much time on the slopes of this mountain range exploring the botanical treasures and describing them for western science, alongside categorizing their ethnobotanical uses by the native people of the region. Part of our task was to split into several groups of 4 to 5 people and disperse across the region in pursuit of recapturing some of his photos. I chose to be one of the people who would go up to the “Yak Meadow”, an alpine clearing not too far below timberline in the dark coniferous forest that was accessible only by rough hiking trails used by the small handful of herders who tended their yaks up at this high elevation. I’ve always been drawn to mountains and elevated points, so it seemed like a good idea.
My subgroup contained four people, and we were scheduled to spend four days and three nights up on the flanks of Yulong Xueshan, in late November, when temperatures were already dropping far below freezing at night. Days were dry, sunny, and pleasant and did warm to well above freezing, however, making the trek tolerable. We brought along only what we really needed for the four days, which included just one “family size” tent that one of us carried while the others packed along the food, water, and cooking gear in addition to whatever personal clothing and sleeping bags we needed. I wasn’t the one carrying the tent.
Progress up the steep forested hillsides was slow and taxing due to the weight of the packs and the sparse air. Due to the warmth of the sun on south-facing hillsides where the forest thinned out a bit, the vegetation became dominated by evergreen shrubbery whose branches were covered with defensive thorns and whose leathery leaves were frequently prickly. The shadier north slopes were somberly clad in dark, thick conifers that shut out most sunlight, so as we hiked we alternated between sweaty hot scrub and chilly shade, which meant continual adding or removal of layers of clothing.
We did not all hike at the same pace, either. Over the course of hours, we tended to string out across hundreds of yards, generally out of sight but trying to at least remain within calling distance and periodically catching up with each-other as a group. We all had hand-drawn maps of where we were going, and the Yak Meadow had several abandoned buildings in it and was a large clearance a number of miles down the path we were on, so we were told that we would not miss seeing it.
Afternoon wore onwards and at one point, I must have made some sort of a wrong turn. Or maybe I was on the correct path and the other three people made the wrong turn. Whatever the case, I was up front, or so I thought, and so I sat and waited for one or all of them to catch up with me. They never did. I was becoming alarmed when after a half hour, which included me backtracking down the trail from whence I had come in an effort to find them, there was no one to be seen. I had been calling out as well, waiting and listening for any hint of a response, but never heard anyone. After backtracking and not finding anyone, I was convinced that I was not, in fact, up front and had instead somehow fallen far behind them.
I was now quite nervous about whether I was going to be able to make it to the Yak Meadow before nightfall. I have a pretty good sense of direction and did not feel that I had gone wrong off of the main herder trail, but obviously this was my first time in the area and I couldn’t be certain about that. I felt that if worst came to worst, that I would survive the freezing night without a tent and could stay in place somewhere in the forest along the trail and find everyone in the morning. The sun had already dipped behind the snowcapped peaks to my west, casting the eastern flanks into deep shadow, although there was still over an hour before true darkness would descend. I had enough warm clothing to wear, some food and water, and a sleeping bag rated to zero degrees Fahrenheit, so I didn’t feel like the situation was life-threatening. I didn’t want to spend the night alone in the forest, but I didn’t feel like I would die either and that I could get to the Yak Meadow the next morning.
That was when I heard a howl. A blood-curdling wolf howl, somewhere off in the forest maybe a mile or so away. It was not exactly close, but it was WAY closer than I wanted. Even worse was that even as my ears heard this, my brain was telling me that this being a wolf was impossible, because wolves are not found in Yunnan Province! There was no damn way in biology that that could be a wolf, but if it wasn’t one, then what the hell was it instead?
Suddenly I was no longer nervous – I was outright terrified! I did not have a tent, I was alone, and my mind was racing into all sorts of terrible death scenarios. Gathering my thought processes back together, I decided that my best bet was to use whatever daylight remained to try to get to the Yak Meadow and stay there for the night. Either my group would already be there, or I would at least be in a clearing. A clearing where I could see that wolf loping across the frozen grasses for me and I could have time to react to my pending death with a scream, rather than just cowering in the shadows all night long imagining that every crackle of a twig was going to be the beast lurking in the trees before it pounced on me.
Motivated by adrenaline, I stepped my hiking pace into high gear, vowing to reach the Yak Meadow before darkness fell. By now I had been separated from my group for almost two hours. Suddenly I broke out of the forest into a wide, flat clearing just as the last rays of the sun were illuminating the lower mountain ranges to the east. The meadow was about a quarter mile long, maybe about an eighth of a mile wide, and contained the ruins of several log cabin style buildings at the far end from where the trail entered it. It also did not contain my group. I was all alone in a wooden ghost town on a freezing night with something howling stalking me. I never felt such despair in my life as I did at that moment. I felt so mortal, so alone, and so scared of that thing that had yowled into the wilderness.
Fortunately, that despair didn’t last long, because within about 10 minutes the other three members of my group appeared. Somehow, thinking I had been dead last, I had become first, and arrived before they did. They were as relieved to see me as I was to see them. They, too, had heard the howling. “What the hell WAS THAT?!?” we asked each-other. “Wolves don’t live in this part of China,” said Steve, the professor who was one of the group leaders. “I have no idea of how it could be a wolf, but it sure sounds like it!”
After fretting about what the animal in the forest was, we knew we had to put that aside and set up camp and cook dinner, as by now it was virtually dark. We picked a spot by a dilapidated corral, a bit away from a disastrously leaning and unsafe-looking former house, built a large campfire, and set up the tent. We made our dinner and were sitting around gazing at the flames when the wolf howled again. This time it sounded like it was in the forest at the far end of the Yak Meadow where the trail was, closer than the time I had heard it alone.
There was no denying it as a figment of imagination, or auditory hallucination. We all heard it. We all cringed. We all piled more wood on the fire and shouted into the darkness at the animal to stay away. After all, if it was a wolf, there was probably only one of it, and as biologists we took minor comfort in the fact that despite their fearsome reputation as bloodthirsty killers, that wolves didn’t attack groups of humans. Still, I was never more glad to have not been alone.
One of the highest mountains in Yunnan Province is Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, Yulong Xueshan in Chinese, standing 18,360 feet (5,596 meters) tall and capped with glaciers. Joseph Rock spent much time on the slopes of this mountain range exploring the botanical treasures and describing them for western science, alongside categorizing their ethnobotanical uses by the native people of the region. Part of our task was to split into several groups of 4 to 5 people and disperse across the region in pursuit of recapturing some of his photos. I chose to be one of the people who would go up to the “Yak Meadow”, an alpine clearing not too far below timberline in the dark coniferous forest that was accessible only by rough hiking trails used by the small handful of herders who tended their yaks up at this high elevation. I’ve always been drawn to mountains and elevated points, so it seemed like a good idea.
My subgroup contained four people, and we were scheduled to spend four days and three nights up on the flanks of Yulong Xueshan, in late November, when temperatures were already dropping far below freezing at night. Days were dry, sunny, and pleasant and did warm to well above freezing, however, making the trek tolerable. We brought along only what we really needed for the four days, which included just one “family size” tent that one of us carried while the others packed along the food, water, and cooking gear in addition to whatever personal clothing and sleeping bags we needed. I wasn’t the one carrying the tent.
Progress up the steep forested hillsides was slow and taxing due to the weight of the packs and the sparse air. Due to the warmth of the sun on south-facing hillsides where the forest thinned out a bit, the vegetation became dominated by evergreen shrubbery whose branches were covered with defensive thorns and whose leathery leaves were frequently prickly. The shadier north slopes were somberly clad in dark, thick conifers that shut out most sunlight, so as we hiked we alternated between sweaty hot scrub and chilly shade, which meant continual adding or removal of layers of clothing.
We did not all hike at the same pace, either. Over the course of hours, we tended to string out across hundreds of yards, generally out of sight but trying to at least remain within calling distance and periodically catching up with each-other as a group. We all had hand-drawn maps of where we were going, and the Yak Meadow had several abandoned buildings in it and was a large clearance a number of miles down the path we were on, so we were told that we would not miss seeing it.
Afternoon wore onwards and at one point, I must have made some sort of a wrong turn. Or maybe I was on the correct path and the other three people made the wrong turn. Whatever the case, I was up front, or so I thought, and so I sat and waited for one or all of them to catch up with me. They never did. I was becoming alarmed when after a half hour, which included me backtracking down the trail from whence I had come in an effort to find them, there was no one to be seen. I had been calling out as well, waiting and listening for any hint of a response, but never heard anyone. After backtracking and not finding anyone, I was convinced that I was not, in fact, up front and had instead somehow fallen far behind them.
I was now quite nervous about whether I was going to be able to make it to the Yak Meadow before nightfall. I have a pretty good sense of direction and did not feel that I had gone wrong off of the main herder trail, but obviously this was my first time in the area and I couldn’t be certain about that. I felt that if worst came to worst, that I would survive the freezing night without a tent and could stay in place somewhere in the forest along the trail and find everyone in the morning. The sun had already dipped behind the snowcapped peaks to my west, casting the eastern flanks into deep shadow, although there was still over an hour before true darkness would descend. I had enough warm clothing to wear, some food and water, and a sleeping bag rated to zero degrees Fahrenheit, so I didn’t feel like the situation was life-threatening. I didn’t want to spend the night alone in the forest, but I didn’t feel like I would die either and that I could get to the Yak Meadow the next morning.
That was when I heard a howl. A blood-curdling wolf howl, somewhere off in the forest maybe a mile or so away. It was not exactly close, but it was WAY closer than I wanted. Even worse was that even as my ears heard this, my brain was telling me that this being a wolf was impossible, because wolves are not found in Yunnan Province! There was no damn way in biology that that could be a wolf, but if it wasn’t one, then what the hell was it instead?
Suddenly I was no longer nervous – I was outright terrified! I did not have a tent, I was alone, and my mind was racing into all sorts of terrible death scenarios. Gathering my thought processes back together, I decided that my best bet was to use whatever daylight remained to try to get to the Yak Meadow and stay there for the night. Either my group would already be there, or I would at least be in a clearing. A clearing where I could see that wolf loping across the frozen grasses for me and I could have time to react to my pending death with a scream, rather than just cowering in the shadows all night long imagining that every crackle of a twig was going to be the beast lurking in the trees before it pounced on me.
Motivated by adrenaline, I stepped my hiking pace into high gear, vowing to reach the Yak Meadow before darkness fell. By now I had been separated from my group for almost two hours. Suddenly I broke out of the forest into a wide, flat clearing just as the last rays of the sun were illuminating the lower mountain ranges to the east. The meadow was about a quarter mile long, maybe about an eighth of a mile wide, and contained the ruins of several log cabin style buildings at the far end from where the trail entered it. It also did not contain my group. I was all alone in a wooden ghost town on a freezing night with something howling stalking me. I never felt such despair in my life as I did at that moment. I felt so mortal, so alone, and so scared of that thing that had yowled into the wilderness.
Fortunately, that despair didn’t last long, because within about 10 minutes the other three members of my group appeared. Somehow, thinking I had been dead last, I had become first, and arrived before they did. They were as relieved to see me as I was to see them. They, too, had heard the howling. “What the hell WAS THAT?!?” we asked each-other. “Wolves don’t live in this part of China,” said Steve, the professor who was one of the group leaders. “I have no idea of how it could be a wolf, but it sure sounds like it!”
After fretting about what the animal in the forest was, we knew we had to put that aside and set up camp and cook dinner, as by now it was virtually dark. We picked a spot by a dilapidated corral, a bit away from a disastrously leaning and unsafe-looking former house, built a large campfire, and set up the tent. We made our dinner and were sitting around gazing at the flames when the wolf howled again. This time it sounded like it was in the forest at the far end of the Yak Meadow where the trail was, closer than the time I had heard it alone.
There was no denying it as a figment of imagination, or auditory hallucination. We all heard it. We all cringed. We all piled more wood on the fire and shouted into the darkness at the animal to stay away. After all, if it was a wolf, there was probably only one of it, and as biologists we took minor comfort in the fact that despite their fearsome reputation as bloodthirsty killers, that wolves didn’t attack groups of humans. Still, I was never more glad to have not been alone.
We never heard the wolf again. but of course the experience immediately became part of our group lore and gained traction via our telling of ghost stories around the campfire at night. On the second day in the camp, a local herder came in to see who these bizarre white Martians who had landed in his forest were, and Steve managed to ask him in his broken Chinese whether the animal we had heard in the forest was a dog. The man shook his head gravely and said, “No, no, that is not a dog.” We couldn’t communicate much beyond that, but once again it reinforced our sense that whatever that animal was, that it was out of place and unwelcome.
Eventually we settled on the Thing In The Forest as being a Were-yak, a part human, part wolf, part yak creature that haunted the living and drove herders out of the forest. The Were-yak had either frightened the original occupants of the Log Cabin Ghost Town out of the meadow, or had simply killed those too unwise to leave. Unlike Werewolves, Were-yaks were most active at New Moons (guess what the lunar cycle was at that time?) and were particularly enamored of nights after Venus set behind the Yulong Xueshan to the west. (Again, guess whether we could see Venus or not in the evenings?) The Were-yak could only be repelled from attack by the ritual burning of a sacrificial yak skull, which group member Taylor found at the edge of the clearing on day two and which we tossed into the fire as an offering to appease its wrath.
I developed a creepy, raspy voice with which to scare Tara, Steve’s wife, as we told stories of horror inflicted upon the good herders of the Yak Meadow who had to abandon their ancestral domain thanks to the unearthly scourge now cast upon the land. This was particularly unkind of me because Tara, as the smallest member of the group, was forced to occupy the outside of the somewhat curved tent since none of the three men would fit into that space. Too bad, Tara – you get eaten first should our magical spells and various skull cremation rituals fail us. Extra suffering is the price of being a woman in this world, as pretty much any woman can relate. 😉 (Steve said that the “family size” tent was indeed suitable for a family of four, if everyone was named Happy, Sneezy, Dopey, and Doc.)
One final thing really stays with me from the entire Were-yak of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain episode: The horrifying sense of paralyzing fear and aloneness that I felt in the half hour between me hearing the first howl in the forest and the arrival of my group in the Yak Meadow to offer solace and company. I’ve had bouts of existential angst and depression in my life, mostly when I was between 15 and 28 years old as opposed to now, but nothing compared to the acute sense of vulnerability and sheer terror that was running through my veins that evening as I faced the prospect of staring down the howling beast in the darkness of night by myself. Rationally, I sort of knew that a wolf (assuming that’s what it indeed was) was statistically highly unlikely to attack me, but that didn’t help me feel better at the time. What made me feel better was other people and a sense of belonging to a group. I remember thinking later that evening as we sat around the fire how living in a perpetual state of involuntary isolation could easily lead people down a path to suicide. I didn’t spend a long time in that mental and emotional state, but I caught a glimpse of where it could go if I did. I’d like to think that it made me a better person to feel those emotions for that fortunately short time. Because I sure wouldn’t have lasted long with them around at that intensity, and have used the awareness of that state to be more empathetic towards others.
Also, sorry again, Tara. 😉
(Footnotes: In 1989 the internet as we know it didn’t exist and most people had no idea of what was coming over the next 10 to 15 years, and how it could change our world. In the writing of this story in time for Halloween 2017, I used the internet to verify a few facts about wolves. One is that wolves do indeed inhabit China, but according to Wikipedia not in Yunnan Province, although they do occur in parts of Tibet, possibly only a few hundred miles away from where we were. Populations are declining in China and not much more than 12,000 wolves exist in the entire country. Whether there were a few remnant wolves or wolf-dog hybrids still extant in the wilderness of the Yulong Xueshan of Yunnan in 1989 is open to question, but all I can do is report what I heard.
One other thing I looked up during the writing of this story is the prevalence of attacks by wolves on humans throughout history. Again, Wikipedia has a good and comprehensively sourced article on this topic, saying that the frequency of wolf attacks on humans varies greatly with both the historical period and geography. Modern-day attacks upon people are generally very rare to nonexistent, although there are places where rabid wolves do attack people with some regularity, such as in India. There are also predatory attacks by non-rabid wolves in India, mainly upon children, who make easier prey than adults do.
Wolf attacks of any kind are exceedingly rare in North America and Europe, and most of Asia outside of India, probably because in those places wolves either live in remote places where there are few people to interact with, and where hunting keeps wolves afraid of humanity in a way that it doesn’t in India. Wolves do not occur in Africa, Australia, or South America, and as such aren’t a factor there. Historically speaking, France and Italy both had thousands of documented wolf attacks upon humans between the years 1362 and 1918, a combination of about 35% rabid and 65% predatory. North American wolves have never been prone to attacking humans however, not even in pre-Colonial times when Native Peoples had extensive interactions with them. There were some, relatively rare attacks, but nothing like what we saw in the European Middle Ages. No wonder that stories of werewolves and fairy tales of evil wolves emanate primarily from Europe and not the USA or Canada. And as someone trained in biology, the thoughts I had at the time were probably correct. I was almost surely going to be safe that first night, despite my terror and dread, even if the howling critter was indeed a lone wolf dispersed over from Tibet to the northwest.
Eventually we settled on the Thing In The Forest as being a Were-yak, a part human, part wolf, part yak creature that haunted the living and drove herders out of the forest. The Were-yak had either frightened the original occupants of the Log Cabin Ghost Town out of the meadow, or had simply killed those too unwise to leave. Unlike Werewolves, Were-yaks were most active at New Moons (guess what the lunar cycle was at that time?) and were particularly enamored of nights after Venus set behind the Yulong Xueshan to the west. (Again, guess whether we could see Venus or not in the evenings?) The Were-yak could only be repelled from attack by the ritual burning of a sacrificial yak skull, which group member Taylor found at the edge of the clearing on day two and which we tossed into the fire as an offering to appease its wrath.
I developed a creepy, raspy voice with which to scare Tara, Steve’s wife, as we told stories of horror inflicted upon the good herders of the Yak Meadow who had to abandon their ancestral domain thanks to the unearthly scourge now cast upon the land. This was particularly unkind of me because Tara, as the smallest member of the group, was forced to occupy the outside of the somewhat curved tent since none of the three men would fit into that space. Too bad, Tara – you get eaten first should our magical spells and various skull cremation rituals fail us. Extra suffering is the price of being a woman in this world, as pretty much any woman can relate. 😉 (Steve said that the “family size” tent was indeed suitable for a family of four, if everyone was named Happy, Sneezy, Dopey, and Doc.)
One final thing really stays with me from the entire Were-yak of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain episode: The horrifying sense of paralyzing fear and aloneness that I felt in the half hour between me hearing the first howl in the forest and the arrival of my group in the Yak Meadow to offer solace and company. I’ve had bouts of existential angst and depression in my life, mostly when I was between 15 and 28 years old as opposed to now, but nothing compared to the acute sense of vulnerability and sheer terror that was running through my veins that evening as I faced the prospect of staring down the howling beast in the darkness of night by myself. Rationally, I sort of knew that a wolf (assuming that’s what it indeed was) was statistically highly unlikely to attack me, but that didn’t help me feel better at the time. What made me feel better was other people and a sense of belonging to a group. I remember thinking later that evening as we sat around the fire how living in a perpetual state of involuntary isolation could easily lead people down a path to suicide. I didn’t spend a long time in that mental and emotional state, but I caught a glimpse of where it could go if I did. I’d like to think that it made me a better person to feel those emotions for that fortunately short time. Because I sure wouldn’t have lasted long with them around at that intensity, and have used the awareness of that state to be more empathetic towards others.
Also, sorry again, Tara. 😉
(Footnotes: In 1989 the internet as we know it didn’t exist and most people had no idea of what was coming over the next 10 to 15 years, and how it could change our world. In the writing of this story in time for Halloween 2017, I used the internet to verify a few facts about wolves. One is that wolves do indeed inhabit China, but according to Wikipedia not in Yunnan Province, although they do occur in parts of Tibet, possibly only a few hundred miles away from where we were. Populations are declining in China and not much more than 12,000 wolves exist in the entire country. Whether there were a few remnant wolves or wolf-dog hybrids still extant in the wilderness of the Yulong Xueshan of Yunnan in 1989 is open to question, but all I can do is report what I heard.
One other thing I looked up during the writing of this story is the prevalence of attacks by wolves on humans throughout history. Again, Wikipedia has a good and comprehensively sourced article on this topic, saying that the frequency of wolf attacks on humans varies greatly with both the historical period and geography. Modern-day attacks upon people are generally very rare to nonexistent, although there are places where rabid wolves do attack people with some regularity, such as in India. There are also predatory attacks by non-rabid wolves in India, mainly upon children, who make easier prey than adults do.
Wolf attacks of any kind are exceedingly rare in North America and Europe, and most of Asia outside of India, probably because in those places wolves either live in remote places where there are few people to interact with, and where hunting keeps wolves afraid of humanity in a way that it doesn’t in India. Wolves do not occur in Africa, Australia, or South America, and as such aren’t a factor there. Historically speaking, France and Italy both had thousands of documented wolf attacks upon humans between the years 1362 and 1918, a combination of about 35% rabid and 65% predatory. North American wolves have never been prone to attacking humans however, not even in pre-Colonial times when Native Peoples had extensive interactions with them. There were some, relatively rare attacks, but nothing like what we saw in the European Middle Ages. No wonder that stories of werewolves and fairy tales of evil wolves emanate primarily from Europe and not the USA or Canada. And as someone trained in biology, the thoughts I had at the time were probably correct. I was almost surely going to be safe that first night, despite my terror and dread, even if the howling critter was indeed a lone wolf dispersed over from Tibet to the northwest.
In the comments on my original Facebook post one of my friends found out (thanks internet!) that there is a breed of dog developed in Yunnan now called the Kunming wolf-dog. They are derived partially from German shepherds from Beijing that were brought into Kunming, the Yunnanese capital and largest city, for use in the military and police work in 1953. Since the original stock of 10 German shepherds was not enough to satisfy demand, additional local wolf-like dogs already living in Yunnan plus other Chinese regions were recruited into the genetic pool, leading to the Kunming wolf-dog, a rare breed recognized in 1988. Online images show that these dogs can look quite a bit like German shepherds, but also like wolves or huskies or malamutes. There’s variance based upon their diverse genetic stock. (Not that we ever saw the animal in the forest anyway – we only heard it.) It might be that what we heard could also have been a feral or semi-feral individual of this breed, and perhaps it was even owned by someone? So it no longer seems to be quite as confusing as it was back then. Although thinking back upon the experience still gives me chills!
Finally, thanks to Pixabay for use of the wolf howling at the moon image, allowed under the “CC0 Creative Commons, Free for commercial use, No attribution required” license. I never caught my own photo of that wolf, so I once again turned to the internet for one.)Â