Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Quiet. But vibrant with sound. It is here that I first heard the “thrumming” sound, a low vibration that permeated the atmosphere. A sound of nature that cannot be seen. Alexander Humboldt (1769-1859) wrote in Personal Narrative a similar experience he had albeit in South America, but well before the mechanization of life dampened our ability to hear this. 'The beasts of the forest retire to the thickets; the birds hide themselves beneath the foliage of the trees, or in the crevices of the rocks. Yet, amid this apparent silence, when we lend an attentive ear to the most feeble sounds transmitted by the air, we hear a dull vibration, a continual murmur, a hum of insects, that fill, if we may use the expression, all the lower strata of the air. Nothing is better fitted to make man feel the extent and power of organic life. Myriads of insects creep upon the soil, and flutter round the plants parched by the ardour of the Sun. A confused noise issues from every bush, from the decayed trunks of trees, from the clefts of the rock, and from the ground undermined by the lizards, millepedes, and cecilias. There are so many voices proclaiming to us, that all nature breathes; and that, under a thousand different forms, life is diffused throughout the cracked and dusty soil, as well as in the bosom of the waters, and in the air that circulates around us.' p234 The Invention of Nature Adrea Wulf

The end of Summer, but the Sheenjek river, flowing south out of the Brooks Range, surrounded by mountains crumbling into talus cones, frosts the edge of the flora, and tundra. It seems everything has reflections, whether it’s the clouds or mountains on the water or the stealth of the grizzly and wolf, marked only by their footprints. It is the edge of the Arctic Wilderness, with greyling swimming the rivers and streams surrounded by Boreal forests.