MEJ’s Reviews > Arctic Dreams > Status Update

To hunt means to have the land around you like clothing. It means to release yourself from rational images of what something means and to be concerned only that it is. To recognize that things exist only insofar as they can be related to other things. These relationships – fresh drops of moisture on top of rocks at a river crossing, and a raven’s distant voice – become patterns. They are always in motion.

“Thousands of miles from familiar surroundings, genuinely frightened, and perhaps strained by the grim conditions of shipboard life, Europeans took to killing any polar bear they saw. They shot them out of pettiness and a sense of rectitude. In time, killing polar bears became the sort of amusement people expected on an arctic journey … They shot them with colonial indifference.”