Courtesy of Barry Lopez

From the chapter on migration in "Arctic Dreams":

"I came to think of the migrations as breath, as the land breathing. In spring a great inhalation of light and animals. The long-bated breath of summer. And an exhalation that propelled them all south in the fall."

"... all migration is not strictly north and south, ... animals are experimenters, pushing at the bounds of their familiar areas in response to changes in their environment. Nothing is ever quite fixed for them. One afternoon a man in Nome remarked that the bowhead migration through Bering Strait was "late this year." It was not really "late" of course, but only part of an arrangement that differs slightly from year to year. They are not on our schedules. Their appointments are not solely with us."

"Animals move more slowly than beta particles, and through a space bewildering larger than that encompassed by a cloud of electrons, but they urge us, if we allow them, toward a consideration of the same questions about the fundamental nature of life, about the relationships that bind forms of energy into recognizable patterns."

I wish I could forget everything in the book, because then I´d be able to devour it again for the first timeI