Isn’t this as good a moment as any to stake your life again in what you dream? The start of a new year, a new decade and a once-every-101-years double-digit (101 years since the last one, in 1919, and 101 years until the next, 2121).

And if you don’t have ready access to the horned lark, before whom to bow from the waist, find something equivalent. For me, now, here, it could be a robin redbreast or an orange-beaked blackbird.

Yes, let’s stake our life again in what we dream, and why not do so by the quiet, solitary ceremony of a small bow to a bird.

‘This is a land where airplanes track icebergs the size of Cleveland and polar bears fly down out of the stars. It is a region, like the desert, rich with metaphor, with adumbration.  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.’ 

Happy new year, fellow nuannaarpoqians! Spread the joy.

See also our celebration of this marvelous book, complete with a richly illustrated quote mosaic.

Source: Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams (London: Picador, 1987), p. xxix

Photo credit: tpsdave at pixabay