To the Bright Edge of the World

by Eowyn Ivey

I looked directly into its eyes and knew that I understood nothing. —From Make Prayers to the Raven, by Richard K. Nelson, on seeing an Alaska wolverine

When we are young, we consume the world in great gulps, and it consumes us, and everything is mysterious and alive and fills us with desire and wonder, fear, and guilt. With the passing of the years, however, those memories become distant and malleable, and we shape them into the stories of who we are.

It is remarkable how we go on. All that we come to know and witness and endure, yet our hearts keep beating, our faith persists.

In its small, dark eyes, I saw nothing recognizable or connected to my brain, no common affinity or acknowledgment. Only an alien wildness that was grand and terrible.

It doesn’t matter what draws explorers—wealth or fame or military power, or even genuine curiosity—they alter a place just by traveling through it and recording what they see.

I am in love with the promise of something else.

I can find no means to account for all that we have witnessed, except to say that I am no longer certain of the boundaries between man & beast, of the living & the dead. All that I have taken for granted, what I have known as real & true, has been called into question. I am certain only of this—I come home to you in love.