Coyotes in Central Park. It’s not unusual at quarter to midnight, during the big dog off-leash hours in Central Park, to suddenly spy an unattended dog in your path while walking your own. My first response recently has been to immediately leash Grace, my Rottweiler, because of her bad leg from beating bone cancer.

Tonight though, as I hear the clasp of her leash close, metal on metal on a cold night, something primal sparks in my brain, something too familiar from years living on a mesa outside Taos, New Mexico. That is not a dog staring us down twenty feet away. It is a Coyote. Twenty feet away from us, less than a hundred yards in from Columbus Circle, closer even to the wall along 59th Street.

This is Manhattan. Coyotes, god’s dog, do not belong here. Or rather, humans don’t belong here, but we’ve tricked nature long enough for it to have forgotten that. Tonight, the Coyote seems not so convinced.

The stupid bumbling human goes for his camera and the Coyote shifts. And I immediately forget the device in my hand- some things being too beautiful to be seen more than once by one. A sliver of light ruffles through her fur, then a flick of a tail, as the coyote swipes left on civilization and darts away- hurried but not scared. More seeming unimpressed, as if collectively mankind had just asked her for spare change when she had a downtown B-Train to catch.

I manage to snap a few blurred photos as the coyote fades to black. I then retreat with Grace, to create space for the coyote but truly, to move closer to the lights and glass of the too far away Time Warner Center.

Then the second coyote. Or maybe it’s the first again, having circled around just to mess with our heads. Simply standing under a lamp post, like a star in a Broadway spotlight, who sticks around for a few fumbled fan photos. Then the coyote goes- maybe south, maybe east, maybe in the mysterious seventh direction. Fast. A shadow behind a tree. A coyote trick of the light. Gone.

Grace and I linger on the lawn awhile, me alert and holding fast to the delusion that wire fencing and an asphalt pathway are enough to ward off wildlife, and wondering if this new New Yorker and his limping Rottweiler and whatever loud track I could bring up on Spotify are menacing enough in case the coyotes are feeling anxious and uncertain, like most residents of this island, and circle back.

Awhile later, I tug on Grace’s leash to say it’s finally time to head home. Almost out of the park, she tugs back, pivots, sniffs. Takes a long moment to stare intently into the distant darkness, seeing a world people cannot see. But one that we can maybe sometimes glimpse- and be reminded that Manhattan’s majesty is not all us. And it will be here when we are not.