The Tsai Jui-yueh Dance Festival, founded in 2006 to commemorate Taiwanese master choreographer Tsai Jui-yueh, is now in its sixth season. Shown here is a scene from the first season's Walking the Beast, expressing Tsai's message of pursuing freedom. (photo by Chuang Kung-ju)

"We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes-something known only to her and to the mountain."

In his classic essay "Thinking Like a Mountain," nature writer Aldo Leopold recalls when, in his youth, he lifted up his rifle to kill a wolf, assuming that this would help the deer thrive in the mountains. He didn't realize at the time that this was a short-sighted, narrow and erroneous view. When wolves die in large numbers, deer populations explode, eating up shrubs and saplings on the mountain; in turn, the denuded mountains lead to dust storms and landslides.

Leopold came to realize that humans should learn to "think like a mountain." The mountains have lived long enough to know that it's important for wolves to be allowed to live and howl freely, because all of nature's creatures live in an interdependent state.