For those who live in the snow and watch it day after day, snow is a book waiting to be read. When the wind blows, the pages turn, characters shift, and the images formed change, yet the language remains the same. This is a language of phantoms, a language spoken by things that are lost and will return... For more than twenty years, I regularly set hunting traps along the inland routes of Alaska. This is an ancient, stubborn dream, a dream nurtured by ancient stories and worn books... In the end, he felt compelled to go see people. No need for conversation—that would be too much—just go see people. To be with another person, even temporarily. He knew that, on another creek, after a long day of walking, one might encounter another trapper. At this moment, I am very glad I didn't bring the other dog, because that dog might immediately run barking toward the creek to chase the bear. I am grateful for this quiet, obedient animal, which sits by my feet, its shoulder hair standing on end, yet its nose constantly twitching. In the years after that afternoon, to make my life in the forest more varied and complete. I burned many porcupines, lived in the yard with branches, following the methods I had learned—burning off the quills and then using sticks to remove them. But my own dog would sit by and watch. I remember one autumn several years ago, Campbell lying on a cot in the lakeside cabin, holding a Bible, intending to read, but soon falling asleep, the Bible dropping onto his chest... Night after night, he always read the same page, doing nothing; even as an unknown foot soldier, it could be a good life. Quiet like a stone under the sun, logging, chopping wood, making fire to warm, melting snow and ice into water... All of this, the pursuit of life, the pursuit of things, is endless. Winter creeps forward step by step in darkness; the hills have snow and wind; this is a barren year, and now in this area, there are very few rabbits. Two years ago, the birch and alder thickets were full of rabbits... In this region, there are wolves. But these wolves are also like shadows.On the thin autumn snow, occasional footprints appear, a distant voice, a phantom under the moonlight, and from time to time someone disappears in the far north, never to be heard from again...\ Disappearances, phantoms, only a few clues, or sometimes no clues at all. Most of the time this is not murder, not a crime intended to punish...\ People simply vanish, like the old man I knew, who repeatedly told many of the same stories. He rarely changed the details and always laughed heartily in the same place.\ But this story was different; he only told it once, and I never heard it again.\ When he spoke of this story, I could only think in my mind of the cracked, knotted walls before me, the wood grayed by weathering; I saw my hands holding a trowel, saw on the plaster slab in my hands, a mound of damp brown clay, below by the stable, Eric's broad, ruddy face.\ Bathed in a sparse ray of light.\ I saw it fall in slow motion, four legs spread, tail rigid, the long hair on the tail flattened, it seemed to float from over 30 feet above, landing with a soft ‘thump' on the dry autumn grass not far from me.\ The moose's open eyes stared blankly and dully at a patch of white streaked with tree marks.\ A few moist snowflakes fell on the eyelashes, then melted in the warm nostrils.\ Then sinking into the long, still ears, the sounds of water and ice before my eyes. Over these years, they were the same and familiar, but ice has other sounds.\ Ice, singing, moaning, howling, roaring, as if it were a living being...\ He spent most of his life living in the distant north.\ So sometimes, he would stop, standing there, seeming forgetful, as if a person suddenly displaced from a familiar environment, confused and disoriented.\ One evening, a wind blew from the treetop of a tall, hidden tree toward us, and then, like leaves detaching from shaking branches, they suddenly came and disappeared.\ He stepped onto the open porch, kicked the snow off the steps, stood at the door, knocked, and listened. No answer, no dog barking, no light burning in the house…
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