I focus the lenses and a figure takes shape. Shaggy with grey and white fur, a hint of honey. She’s climbing down into a hole in the snow. A wolf.

‘Wow,’ I breathe. ‘How big is the den?’

‘About ten feet. She has to dig deep enough so predators can’t hear them. I mean, wolves are at the top of the food chain but occasionally there’s danger from grizzlies. You can’t be too careful.’

‘Are there really cubs down there?’

‘Pups, not cubs. Hold on, you’ll see.’

We stand quietly, watching. I think of Jane Goodall and the years she spent observing chimpanzees, studying their behaviour. I can’t imagine living out here for weeks, let alone months. I wiggle my toes in my boots some more, trying not to make any movement. Wildlife research is such patient work, I don’t know if I have it in me. For a while now, I’ve thought journalism may be the right path. I could get a job for one of those animal sites or even be a National Geographic reporter, like the ones who covered all of Jane’s amazing work.

‘Look now,’ Jaxon whispers.

I see the wolf reappear, holding a pup in her mouth.

‘Oh my God.’

She is so pretty. But not like other dogs. This isn’t some cute poodle or even a mutt like Bella. She’s wild and she knows it. I can tell this is her world where she’s boss, not us.

I watch, my eyes stuck to the binoculars, transfixed. She puts down the pup and goes back for another. The pup follows her and then changes his mind and turns around, sniffing the snow curiously. Soon, there are three pups, four and five.

‘Their coats are so thick, they look so comfortable in the snow,’ I say, wiggling my toes again, more with excitement now than cold.

‘They’re at home,’ my father says. ‘It’s us who are defenceless out here in these temperatures. Without all our clothes and equipment, we’d get hypothermia and be dead in an hour. The wolf belongs here; this is her land.’

He said what I had just thought. Her land. He truly sounds like a kindred animal lover.

‘They only weigh a pound when they’re born,’ Jaxon says, ‘and they stay with the parents until they’re two. Hold on, there are more.’

We watch another pup appear. The six of them start romping around, biting each other playfully. Jaxon notes down all his observations in a small pad.

‘They’re beautiful, aren’t they?’ my father says.

I smile. ‘Beautiful isn’t enough to describe it—I can’t even think of the right word. Magnificent?’

‘In nature,’ my father says, ‘experiences often can’t be described in words.’

I look at him. I can’t think of the right words to describe being here with him either. It’s full of opposites: right and good, yet wrong and unfamiliar. He’s my blood, the DNA behind my one brown eye, but he’s a stranger. We are family, or I want us to be family, but I have no idea how. Are we family already, or do we have to become it?