Way of the Wolf
Sep 06, 2025 9:01 am
Greetings all,
I hope the summer has been brimming with adventure, festivities, wild berries and late evening sunsets.
My summer has been one of contrasts, with much of July spent in a remote Highland glen, and the August spent in the frenzy of the Edinburgh Fringe festival.
In a way there was a fine balance, recharging in the Highlands, by river and hills, indulging in fire time, stories, songs and craic, with an old world flavour, then returning to the worlds biggest arts festival, sharing wild tales and wolf lore in the heart of the city.
A Wolf Shall Devour the Sun
Edinburgh Fringe is a funny beastie- most locals have a love-hate relationship with it. It's busy and chaotic, yet a chance to enjoy an explosion of creativity here on our doorstep. The Scottish Storytelling Centre is a haven of relative calm amidst the chaos, and fine hosts they were this year as always.
Having only gigged our wolf show twice before, it was still pretty fresh as we started our fringe run, but we were really touched by the response from audience and critics alike. The latter half of our run sold out, and so we added another date at the end, which also sold out! Throw in the occasional standing ovation and a Derek Award for storytelling and I sense we did quite well. It was really touching to speak to people after he show too, and I sense there is plenty more life in this show yet.
I'm imagining a tour ahead of next years Fringe, so if you'd like a multimedia, folksy storytelling, music, shadow puppetry show about wolves in your local area, and are confident of drumming up an audience, let us know.
You can get a flavour of the show here:
Way of the Wolf
The response to the show is partly due to working with a creative genius (Jemima Thewes), and also having 10 years of creative exploration and mythic-ecological curiosity around the wolf behind it. I've been seeking wolves in both lore and landscape.
A key part of the process has been travelling to Europe to get close to living wolves. Through finding their tracks and working with people who have been observing them in the wild for many years, I got to understand the living creature, rather than just the fictional archetype.
In October (9-12) I'll be returning to the Wilderness school where I've had my most profound tracking experiences, and co-curating a long weekend of wolf tracking and storytelling. I sense it might be a bit special. We have a fine group of people so far, but still have space for a few more people to sign up. It's one hour from Berlin by train, easy to get to yet with fascinating forest life.
Latest Substack Article
With the frenzy of the fringe over, and my summer galavanting complete, I finally settled down to write something on my Substack this week.
If you're interested in Faery lore and mythopoetic musings, and might enjoy reading a classic tale of faery encounter from my home town of Inverness, then it might be for you...
Wishing you well
Dougie