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I recall in this context two thoughts. A man in Anaktuvuk Pass, in response to a question about what he did when he visited a new place, said to me, "I listen." That's all. I listen, he meant, to what the land is saying. I walk around in it and strain my senses in appreciation of it for a long time before I, myself, ever speak a word. Entered in such a respectful manner, he believed, the land would open to him. The other thought draws, again, on the experience of American painters. As they sought an identity apart from their European counterparts in the nineteenth century, they came to conceive of the land as intrinsically powerful: beguiling and frightening, endlessly arresting and incomprehensibly rich, unknowable and wild. "The face of God," they said.

In a simple bow from the waist before the nest of the horned lark, you are able to stake your life, again, in what you dream.

Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams