No
summer is long enough to take away the winter. The winter always comes. You try
to get a feeling for the proportions of a full life, one that confronts
everything. An animal dies. You face two central, philosophical questions: What
is death, and what is the nature of an animal? You fall asleep on the summer
tundra in the streaming light. You awake to the sound of birds--plovers and
Lapland longspurs. Inches from your eye, an intense cluster of Parisian blue
flowers. A few inches farther a poppy nods under the weight of a bumblebee.
Above, cumulus clouds as voluptuous as summer fruits. You roll over and embrace
the earth.--Barry Lopez, from Arctic Dreams
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