When I first moved out here to the country thirty-some years ago, the coyotes living in the pine and juniper wilds around my home yowled nightly. They also had a strange habit: if a small plane flew low over the ranchlands at night, they would ignite into a crying fit just after the plane cleared the gulley, hill, or island of prairie where they happened to be. The howling frightened my wife, but I found myself fascinated by how the wild chorus swelled and ebbed all around us. However, as more houses began to appear in the landscape around me, the sound of the chorus began to fade. By the early 2000s, the nights fell into silence, and the coyotes were gone. This year, for whatever reason, the coyotes have returned to the swaths of darkness surrounding my house. I can’t say this is comforting, exactly, but a part of me appreciates the crying in the night.
—Mitchell Hegman
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