Draft No. 4

2 annotations • Nov 2024 • data

Developing a structure is seldom that simple. Almost always there is considerable tension between chronology and theme, and chronology traditionally wins. The narrative wants to move from point to point through time, while topics that have arisen now and again across someone's life cry out to be collected. They want to draw themselves together in a single body, in the way that salt does underground. But chronology usually dominates.
What impresses someone most of all about the Arctic world are its cycles. Meteorological cycles, biological cycles. Pendular swings in the populations of salmon, sheefish, caribou, lynx, snowshoe hare. Cycles unaffected by people. The wilderness operating in its own way. Seasonal cycles, annual cycles, cycles of five, ten, fifty, a hundred years. Cycles of the present and the past.