Those Who Stay

The animals that live in the weather, and their one answer to it: to stand in it.

The muskox has lived on this plateau since the ice age, and it has one answer to the weather: to stand in it. Two of them come walking toward me out of the snowfall as if I were not there.

A horse on the Icelandic coast turns its back to the wind and waits. One muskox lies down and lets the storm bury it to the eyes. Then the light comes, for a moment, and two of them stand nose to nose in it with their coats on fire. An ibex sits on a tower of rock above the cloud, where the weather is something that happens to other animals.

I went north looking for landscapes and found that the landscapes had inhabitants, and that the inhabitants had something to teach me. The lesson was patience. They stay, and so, in the end, did I.