Foremost, whenever I hear this song, the lyrics are almost alive. They create an amazing, movie-like sequence that I replay every time I hear it. One thing that grabs my attention first is the way in which the boy, near our age, walks around with nature. Many times have I gone over to the national park near my home and run the trails there. I understand why people retreat into nature, seeing how serene it is. I love the way he refers to the she-wolf as his “mother”, and her howls are like a dinner bell, calling him home. The way people isolate themselves from nature has always confused me; we are just a part of nature as the ant we step on or the snake in the garden. His retreat back, literally, into nature is what strikes me the most, becoming synonymous with nature and becoming wild while throwing away artificial things like objects and society. Like in literary Romanticism, nature and God are the same, just like in the song and how he turns his “obedience to God” as he howls with his wolf family. The chorus also speaks to me in a way I interpret it to mean everything is skin deep. You can wear your skin, but what matters is not what is on the outside and what people see of you, but what you have created for yourself internally. This is what I think the most important part is, the internal truth and having it howl to the highest truth: the mixture of nature and God.
