Passage A: When wolves returned to the northern valley, the whole landscape seemed to exhale. Elk that had lingered lazily along the streambanks began to move, wary now of ambush, and willows and aspen shot up where the herds no longer browsed them bare. Songbirds nested in the new thickets; beavers, finding timber again, built ponds that steadied the water table. A single predator, it appeared, had stitched a frayed ecosystem back together from the top down. Passage B: The wolf story is irresistible, which is precisely why we should be careful with it. The predators returned the same decade that drought eased, that beaver were trapped less, and that managers cut elk permits. Willows recovered in some drainages and not others, tracking groundwater more tightly than any fear of wolves. To credit one charismatic animal for a tangle of changes is to mistake a good narrative for a demonstrated cause. The valley is recovering; why remains an open question.