Wolf Shoppe: Notecards

Matriotism Notecard
Model: MAT-01
Pack of 4 cards and envelopes - $8
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Show your wolf support by purchasing these notecards featuring a print of one of Pam Brown's original watercolor

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Season of the Wolf/Spring
Model: ANC-202
Pack of 6 cards - $12
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Alpha Wolf Mother
Keeper of the Clan,
Blood readies in your strong muscles
for the hunt.
But you must stay behind
and tend the future, the clan young.
See them go
the others of your family.
They will hunt food for you this night.
Each must tend to the responsibilities
of this common life
giving up ones’ desires,
hunting, birthing, killing, dying,
for the sake of the Clan.
You are part of a family
that lives beyond all individual lives,
and this Clan’s spirit is incarnated each Spring,
in the bodies of the young,
born from you, and you only,
Alpha Wolf Mother.

Art by Linda Matusich ©1998
Text by Diane Gibbons

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Season of the Wolf/Summer
Model: ANC-203
Pack of 6 cards - $12
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We are the Wild Ones
that run through your dreams.
We are the Hungry Ones
that stretch our keen senses
across vast landscapes seeking prey.
We are the Howling Ones
singing an ancient song
that plays a chord of
melancholy and ecstasy in your soul.
Look back, Human.
Our ancestors knew respect for each other,
hunted together,
spoke the language of spirit
together,
in the green Summers of older times.
Look back, remember,
and return,
so that we may live.

Art by Linda Matusich ©1998
Text by Diane Gibbons

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Season of the Wolf/Autumn
Model: ANC-204
Pack of 6 cards - $12
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Falling,
like leaves on Autumn winds,
once we were the most widely distributed mammal
on the whole Earth.
Below are the valleys of cows,
Below are the dark-clouded cities,
Below are the Ones who Forget,
Below is death.
Yet,
falling,
we rise.
We walk in spirit form
and speak to our descendants,
We run through the memories of the forests,
the winds howl our songs,
and shamans still seek our wisdom.
We fall,
but we will never die.

Art by Linda Matusich ©1998
Text by Diane Gibbons

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Seasons of the Wolf/Winter
Model: ANC-201
Pack of 6 cards - $12
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The Northern Spirits have brought the snows
and the long cold
and the waiting.
Hunger may live in us up to two weeks
as we try and try again
to find the prey which will offer itself up to become
Wolf flesh.
Hunger grows in us for more than food, as well.
Soon we, Alpha male and female of this Clan,
will feel the pull to join,
the warmth of fur, the play, the mating, the joy.
The promise of the future
an instinct in our blood,
and the hope of the Wild burns in us like fire,
through the long, cold nights of Winter.
art by Linda Matusich ©1998
text by Diane Gibbons

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Tatanka - Snow Buffalo
Model: ANC-241
Pack of 6 cards - $12
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The American Buffalo, or Bison (Bison bison) is called “Tatanka” by the Lakota (Sioux) American Indian people. It formerly ranged across most of the U.S., northern Mexico and central Canada.
The buffalo is one of the most important animal symbols in American history and in many Indian cultures. For the Plains Indians, the buffalo was considered sacred, because their way of life, religion and culture depended on, or revolved around the great herds. Virtually everything the Plains Indians needed to survive in their difficult environment, the buffalo gave them; including food, clothing, bone tools and hides to cover their teepees.

Before the Civil War, there may have been over 40 million buffalo in the West alone. After the war, huge numbers of settlers pushed westward on to lands long occupied and now owned through treaties by the different Plains Indian tribes. As treaty after treaty was broken, and the white settlements grew, the Indians and great buffalo herds were forced into ever-shrinking wild country. At this time, hundreds of buffalo hunters also swarmed the Plains, resulting in the greatest slaughter of wildlife the world has ever known.

By 1885, the buffalo were, incredibly, now rare and the Plains Indians’ primary food source was gone. The buffalo had been intentionally exterminated to make room for livestock and to destroy the Indians’ way of life. Through starvation and constantly being hunted down by the U.S. Army Cavalry, the Plains Indians were forced to live on the small reservations, most of which were waterless, harsh lands unwanted by the settlers.

Since then, the resilience and strength of the Indian cultures have resisted both annihilation and assimilation into the predominant white cultures around them. Likewise, the buffalo are returning in ever-greater numbers on preserves and ranches throughout America.
The lives and fates of the buffalo and the Plains Indian cultures have always been connected and woven together. The buffalo is the physical embodiment and animal symbol of the abundance, generosity and power of the Universe from the Creator. The buffalo is our relation, and it is Sacred.

Artwork by Andy Wenner (c) 2003
Text by Michael DeMunn (Dahad'nyah)

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White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus)
Model: ANC-71
Pack of 6 cards - $12
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One of the most abundant large mammals in North America, the white-tailed deer, ranges over much of the continent. Thirty subspecies are recognized of which 17 are found north of Mexico. White-tails are more plentiful today than when Europeans first settled the New World. The cutting of forests and farming have favored deer populations as deer are offered more resources in fields and wood’s edges than deep forests.

Early morning and dusk are the usual time of peak activity. Browse of trees and shrubs are favorite food sources over grasses although corn and alfalfa are eaten. Male deer, or bucks, grow a new set of antlers each year. The number of points and the size of the rack is more an indication of nutrition than age. The female, or doe, gives birth to 1-4 spotted fawns in the late spring. The fawns are placed in the woods or fields by the doe. She returns only to nurse them. Their spotted coats and habit of lying still protects them from most harm. At 3 weeks of age fawns begin to follow the doe. By early fall the fawn’s spots disappear.

The reddish-brown coat of young and adults is gradually replaced by a grayish-brown coat. These hairs are less numerous but are hollow. The trapped air inside each hair gives the deer superb protection from the cold. White-tailed deer depend on alertness and speed to elude predators. They can reach speeds of 35 to 40 mph and can easily jump 8 feet. When they are startled they quickly dash off usually just far enough to reach protective cover. The long tail is sometimes flashed upright showing a white underside to signal other deer of alarm.

Artwork and text by Cindy Page (c) 1992

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Calling for the Lost Ones
Model: ANC-78
Pack of 6 cards - $12
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Wolves are synonymous with wilderness, and their voices call forth something primordially wild to human ears. Large, canny, mammal predators like us, they are also social creatures who communicate vocally. Wolves are representative of that which is best left untamed, most beautiful and most wise when left wild and free.

Today, when so much life on our planet is threatened, we might well hear in the plaintive howling of a single wolf something of the world’s own grief for what has been lost.

Nor is it any wonder that the call of the wild should stir a response from our own wild hearts.

Artwork by Linda Matusich (c) 1993
Text by Peter Fortunato

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