I bring my glasses up to study again the muskoxen in the far valley to the south. Among fifty or sixty animals are ten or fifteen calves. I regard them for a while, until I hear the clattering alarm call of a sandhill crane. To the southwest an arctic hare rises up immediately, smartly alert. To the southeast a snowy owl sitting on a tussock, as conspicuous in its whiteness as the hare, pivots its head far around, right then left. The hare, as intent as if someone had whistled, has found me and fixed me with his stare. In that moment I feel the earth bent like a bow and sense the volume of
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I wonder if animals understand each other's languages or just key phrases?
