A story to crack your heart

These days I am deeply absorbed by a wonderful book: If Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackie (I strongly recommend it).

In this book, Sharon is sharing a little story, which is the overview of a book called “The Crossing” written by Cormac McCarthy. I was deeply touched and moved by the story and I feel like sharing it here, maybe it has some effects on you too and maybe cracking your heart a little bit. Here it is, in the words of Sharon Blackie.

"It is the story of a boy who lives on a cattle ranch, and rescues a she-wolf from a trap he himself has set. The boy decides to take her back across the border to the mountains of Mexico, where he believes she came from. He travels with the injured and wary wolf, developing a deep bond with her, but once they are in Mexico she is captured by officials who impound her and hand her over to a group of local men. They take her into an arena, where she is going to be made to fight every one of the town's dogs in turn.

The boy, knowing that she will sooner or later be torn apart, tries to rescue the heavily pregnant wolf, but he doesn't succeed. He leaves the arena, fetches his rifle, returns, and shoots the wolf in the head. He then trades his riffle for the wolf's carcass, and takes her to the hills astride his horse, to bury her:

He squatted over the wolf and touched her fur. He touched the cold and perfect teeth. The eye turned to the fire gave back no light and he closed it with his thumb and sat by her and put his hand upon her bloodied forehead and closed his own eyes that he could see her running in the starlight where the grass wet and the sun's coming as yet had not undone the rich matrix of creatures passed in the night before her . . . (the Italic paragraph is from “The Crossing” written by Cormac McCarthy)

I broke down completely. I didn't know quite what it was that I was weeping for, but I felt as if my hear was caving in. For the wolf, for all wolves, for all the pregnant females who are beaten by men, for all the wild things, for the cruelty of humans, for the heartbroken boy, for my dogs, for the future death of my dogs, for the beauty of words, for my life, for all our lives, for the whole world which we are turning into a Wasteland. For all the Wastelands of the human spirit, for the Wasteland that I was creating out of my own life."

And these are my questions for your personal reflection:
In which ways you are moved by the story? What touched you, what stayed with you? Where do you see yourself in the story?