Wolf

At dusk a howl lifts off the treeline and hangs there, and before it has faded another one answers, and then another, until the whole valley is passing the sound around. That is a pack keeping track of itself across ground most animals would never try to cover. The word for wolf in Halq'eméylem is steqó:ya, and the first thing to know about it is that it does almost nothing alone.

A wolf is a family animal first. The pack is usually a parent pair and their young, five or six in all, and they raise the pups together and travel and hunt as one. The wolves of this coast live right by the ocean and take a good part of what they eat from it. They dig clams out of the sand, crack mussels open, and swim long stretches of cold channel between islands, treating open water as a road instead of a wall.

That loyalty is the whole of it. The wolf stands for family, for the strength of the pack, the one who stays close and guides and protects its own. It travels the distance, it answers when it is called, and it does not leave anyone behind.

The wolf is for the person who shows up for their people. That is steqó:ya.