Leopold describes this encounter as a moment when he is transformed — converted — to a new way of thinking about human-animal relationships.
Somehow, the wolf’s fiery green gaze ejects Leopold from his dull and confined human-centeredness into a more expansive ecological awareness of human-nonhuman interdependence.
Moreover, it isn’t just the wolf’s green gaze forcing Leopold to radically revise his anthropocentric worldview.
The mountain itself rejects Leopold’s naive and destructive view of human-environment relationships: