This tale opens along a dark highway in the Canadian tundra. You're a rugged man doing some manly stuff up north. Or maybe, you're a fine lady doing some manly stuff up north. Driving your pick-up truck that you took from your angry wife (or dead-beat husband), listening to country music and some indie folk, you're now up here in the Great White North.
Wolf howls in the distance. Awoooooo
The lights sure look pretty, you tell yourself, if you're a lady. If you're a man, you just look straight ahead knowing that the Aurora borealis is just a bunch of solar radiation on the upper layers of a planet hurling across the cosmic void.
As you're pondering these thoughts suddenly you see a shadow move on the road, and you slam on the brakes.
The stag stares at you. Silently.
"Well, I'll be damned," you say to yourself. "What are ya little fellow doing out there on the road, all on your own?"
The stag snorts, his breath visible in the headlights, and then raising his head, he moves on.
Slowly, you begin to drive again, listening to the sound of the wheels on the road.
Sometimes we forget that there is a wild world out there that is impartial to our whims. The machinations of the universe keep on going, and here we are on these few inches of topsoil, lacquered with a thin veneer of civilization.
You see a herd of deer on the fields of snow, so you pull by the side of the road and lower the window. The wind is cold, swirling all around you, whispering its borealis mysteries.
What is this mystery of life? These creatures out here in the nearly barren places. So cold and frozen. All for what? Why does life cling to life?
What would it be like to experience reality like them? The turning of the seasons with its harsh extremes in winter and summer. The scarcity of food and predators. Sickness and death. But also life! The glory of the sun and the rain. The fields of flowers blooming lovely and endless grass! The currents of the mighty river ever flowing beyond all wonder. This, you think to yourself, if you're a lady.
If you're a man, you spit your tobacco on the ground, close the window, and keep on driving along those tundra roads.
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