Commentary: Fox1, Wolf1, and Wolf2 were flashbacks where a waking state was interrupted while seated. The vision one is unique among them, and goes back and forth during a waking state while laying down against the side of a bed. It should be noted that I had medication reactions during much of 2023, but was taken off of them before the Fall (they caused dissociation and non-epileptic seizures, so I want to be transparent about that since I’m going to be describing altered perceptual states). Most of these experiences continued after that period, but I try to remain skeptical. All but the vision occurred during daytime hours. The imagery between the wolf memories seems congruous, with subspecies, environment, perceived optical effects and color spectrum appearing to match between them. I appear to be the same younger adult Northwestern Wolf in all of the wolf memories. I’m guessing between 1-3years old. (Note: I’m neither a Biologist nor an Ecologist..so I’m making the best visual-associations I can here, based on photo examples and what I know at the time of writing.)
Oddities/notes on vision: When I first recorded what I saw I described that none of the wolf memories were in full-frame vision. The central visual field appears narrower than expected; more like a 4:3 image with the periphery difficult to discern, and I am unable to tell where it begins or how far it extends to the sides. Black and greys are sharp/stark(like tones in a Tri-X photograph), but brown is difficult to separate from black. Blue is present, but faded. The colors green and red seemed discernable but apparently what I consider "discernable" I’ve learned is rather desaturated to others.
The tones in the environment were similar to what you'd see on a foggy day, but with the fog subtracted..I'm unsure if the color spectrum doesn't match or if I just assumed that red and green were present in the imagery where I would expect to find them, and confused the colors. Looking at images of forests where the green was replaced by yellow and brown, I still interpret the foliage as green. I'm not sure what to make of this. Red appears to be discernable, at least against light surfaces. In the fox memory everything appears brighter, and the sun is a glare, but the blue sky appears hazy and muted. I don't notice any glaring differences in the color spectrum between the fox and wolf memories, although the fox memories appear to be brighter.
Contexts for me and color: I've always been fascinated with how saturated colors are, and looking at the color blue used to give me migraines and nausea throughout most of my childhood. It's amazing how many things in life are blue; the daytime sky, car seats, puffy coats in winter, etc. It forced me to take notice of these things and I learned to look at the ground most of the time. I couldn't look at the sky for any real amount of time during the daylight until I was a teenager. The sky is beautiful, and the unique blue that’s visible at the beach in summer became my favorite color when I was finally able to look at it for an extended amount of time. I also love the saturated green of trees and grass after the rainfall in summer. They’re otherworldly in a way, and I never understood why, or why I think in such desaturated colors. I don’t think I have colorblindness, and I’ve tried to describe this before when others asked why nearly all of my art is in black and white.. Neither color looks the same in my head, so I try to look at them for as long as I can now before they disappear as they are. Anyway, let's get on with it..
(Violent death, Later 2023)
I was sitting up watching a music video that unexpectedly switched to footage of a wolfpack running down a fox and killing them. I recognized what was going to happen when I saw the little red form darting through the snow and shut the laptop as they caught him.
I remember staring straight ahead for a few seconds, unsure why I was so distraught, and then I had this flashback:
I was running in the snow, seemingly driven out of the forest. The area is a wide-open tundra with trees to the left in the distance, where the last of the forest gives way to endless flatland. There was nowhere else to run except forward and the snow was high enough that it brushed across my underside, my forelegs hitting through it as I scurried and leapt, knowing I was losing ground. I think there were other wolves that flanked me and kept me from veering back toward the forest.. There was nowhere left to go. The sun was glaring above at 2-o'clock in a hazily muted blue sky. The only emotions present are panic and fear. I understood that I was about to die, and that life had an end. I looked back slightly right as the wolves overtook me..
They had darker coats, and I felt one collide with me violently. I don’t even remember ever hitting the snow, just their body and how completely ungiving it was..like being thrown against an engine block. I was bitten once on the back of my head, and then my vision went black and I couldn't hear anything anymore, but I could still feel things...I felt bones disjoint and breaking somewhere behind me, and how small they felt. I felt so utterly small. I came-to laying on the side of the bed.
(The entire memory was likely only around 5 seconds long. I avoided looking at this memory further for months, as some may be aware from my posts on reddit. Even as short as it is it's hard to write about, but I want to have a record of it. I’ve always associated foxes with the concept of vulnerability and death in nature, but didn't know why..)
(Death in snow, ?/2023)
I have been walking for some time and was now on the left-hand side of an open, slow-covered path between two tree lines. I pause before a slight narrowing of the path and notice the brightness of the sky. There is still daylight left overhead, but the light is starting to dim to haze and I’m tired of walking . To my left is a smaller outcrop before the larger trees begin, with shorter spruce trees; their branches bend downward and laden by winter. Everything is a desaturated mix of greys and white, except for the trees that appear as some type of faded green. I lay down in the snow for a while and look from right to left, then down at the snow.
There’s blood on my coat that’s beginning to stain the snow between my forelegs. It’s coming from somewhere under my fur on the left where it’s ruffled and matted, up near my neck or high on my front but I can’t see the wound. I don't seem to connect the sight of the blood with imminent death. I don't seem to be aware that I'm going to die. I have a concept of self-identity, but not of a beginning or ending of it.
I know that I am me, and that I am alone for the first time, but I don’t understand why that is; the idea seems foreign, unsettling, and at the forefront of my thoughts. I feel confusion and sadness, exhaustion and numbness. The forest has never seemed so quiet, and I don’t know where the others are or what has happened. I fall asleep in the snow.
(End of winter, 9?/2023)
I am on a muddy, low-hilled path along the edge of a tree-line on my right. It is late winter or early spring, and the winter snow is melting and dripping from the trees. The daytime sky is cloudy, and the air is heavy with the scent and sight of mist. There are birds chirping from within the forest, and the sounds are close by. We’ve stopped for some reason and I seem have turned around before the flashback began. I am looking at two black wolves with dark grey markings on their faces and fronts standing on the rocky hill I just passed. Their fur sharply stands out amidst the greys and browns of the scene. Their eyes are fixated on something somewhere behind me, and they’re both snarling and baring teeth. I think there are other wolves somewhere behind me out of line-of-sight, but no one else is growling or making sounds. We’re all together, and I feel that the two black wolves are “not friends, but family” when I look up at them. They’re the same subspecies as me, but none of the other wolves look like them; they’re siblings who are mated to each other. I feel this is uncommon in our pack. I don’t think they like me very much, but I don’t know why.
This is a calm memory; we’re together and traveling. The ground is mostly solid here, and my paws don’t sink into the mud. Travel is easier without the snow, at least here.
(A note on the “not friends, but family”: I don’t seem to make a distinction between blood-related and non-blood-related pack members when it comes to family; the concept was abstract but very clearly meant “family”. Similarly, the meaning of “Friend” also only appears to mean "not hostile toward me" rather than being a term specifically describing affection, though it doesn’t necessarily exclude affection. These make sense to me even now. Also important to note is that the genes dictating black fur color are dominant, so the siblings are likely not genetically related to me. All of the other wolves seem to share my coat pattern. I wonder about their story, and what's happening in this memory.)
(Resting by cave, 1/2024)
I’m laying down over the side of my bed which is a mattress on the floor and rest my head between my arms to look away from the laptop screen for a bit. I close my eyes, but instead of seeing darkness my eyes open elsewhere: I see streaks of grey and white light and a blurred scene, slowly tilting and drifting a little to the left and then drifting to the right as the image becomes clearer and the streaking becomes a slightly offset image effect where the left edges are doubled. I see a varied grey rock wall, and then the blurry shape of a wolf facing to my left as if the scene slowly begins to focus.
There are light brown and beige tones that become discernable around the wolf and the offset lines around it, and the color mingles a bit with the colors of the surrounding rock wall at first as things focus. I close my eyes there and they open here automatically..I’m back in my room and I sit up and shake off my head and body, and look around rather confused, unsure what I had just glimpsed.
I close my eyes again, this time on purpose to check, and they open there again (the opening is automatic, but I feel it), and this repeats several more times, back and forth(I don’t seem to have recorded the number of times; perhaps 4-5 altogether?).
Overall, the following occurs:
My vision is clear now and I am able to actively look around freely, unlike in any of the other memories. Otherwise, it seems to be the same. I’m in the same area with the other wolves who look like me; this is my pack. I can’t see all of us, but they’re further to the right, near the edge of the rock wall. I think there are 10-15 of us; we are so many.
I appear to be just inside the mouth of a large cave, a few feet from the edge of the shade. The entrance appears oval(though I didn’t look up, and only felt the cool of the shade and knew the ceiling was there), and I am laying calmly on a large, flat rock with a slanted or lopsided edge in front of me, the top surface is ~6-10” high, it’s mostly smooth, but I think there’s an oblique line across the center of the rock where there’s a layer height difference(this isn’t visible though).
I am facing the right wall of the cave (when looking in). That side of the cave continues out, forming a large wall. One of us is atop it out of site, and another is standing on a raised area against the wall, and facing toward the cave. There are a few rocks on the ground inside the mouth of the cave, but it’s mostly dirt, and there is shade and cool here, but no one else wanted to enter to get out of the heat. The sun is bright and it is hot; summer, and we were traveling somewhere but stopped to rest. We’re about to move again; and the others are starting to move. The one on the mound signals to me that we’re leaving, and I’m about to stand up and my eyes open here.
(Notes: I don’t appear to have been asleep during this, and I wrote that the entire experience lasted “under 10 minutes” in my notes (So I’m assuming between 7-10min). There was no transition or delay between waking and the trance state; it was like blinking. I couldn’t remember if the narrow-field vision effect occurred like in the previous wolf memories; I was too enthralled at being in my body again. I’m unsure if there was sound; I didn’t note any afterward, but there may have been. If anyone is familiar with this type of trance state, please reply or contact me.. I couldn’t find anything being described this way, but I feel like this is something familiar that I had heard of before.
As an ending remark, I went down the rabbit hole on this one and attempted to see if I could find caves that matched what I saw. I had never seen the place before, and never visited the Pacific Northwest where Northwestern Wolves seemed to range in the U.S. I tried to find areas where the types of trees and weather I saw might be common in those areas. I don’t know how accurate this was, but I ended up looking at Oregon and found one cave called Hidden Forest Cave that appears to match all of the features I saw. Though, debris has fallen from the cave ceiling over the area where the rock I was laying on would have been. If it’s real, and that’s the place, then this all happened a long time ago. Still, I want to go there someday and see.)