Killian takes me further up the hill, past the other dens, to the very last one to be occupied. When I was a little girl and my parents were alive, my mother would bring food up to the elders who lived here. I was fascinated by them. They split their time almost evenly between fur and skin. They hunted their own food, and bed down with the rest of the pack in piles. I always got the sense when I talked to one, I talked to all of them.

We don’t live like this anymore. We have our own cabins, keep to our own little groups. There’s a thread that...