"To the explorer, the land becomes large, alive like an animal; it humbles him in a way he cannot pronounce.  It is not that the land is simply beautiful but that it is powerful.  It's power derives from the tension between it's obvious beauty and it's capacity to take life.  it's power flows into the mind from a realization of how darkness and light are bound together within it, and the feeling that this is the floor of creation."

"The aurora borealis easily evoke feelings of awe and tenderness; the most remarkable effect they seem to have, however, is to draw a viewer emotionally up and out of himself, because they throw the skys into a third dimension, on such a vast scale, in such a beautiful way, that they make the emotion of self-pity impossible."

"This is a land where airplanes track icebergs the size of Cleveland and polar bears fly down out of the stars.  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."

Artic Dreams - Imagination and Desire in a Northern landscape
1986

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