Arctic Wild Author:Lois Crisler "All our married life we had lived in 'wilderness,' first in Washington and then in Colorado. But that was captive wilderness. This was free. — With freedom came a 'cosmic gaiety.' The mountain men of the old West must have felt it often. In the tense gray air on a mountain ridge, as a thunderstorm strides toward you over the plain below, you can... more » catch hands and run laughing as far as you dare, and farther.
And there was another feeling. It was the 'arctic euphoria' which comes when people are free and equal in a wild sunlit world. No man is slave, no man is master, facing the sunlight on wild wood and wild fur and eyes. Liberty seeps like health into your heart. The weight of being an object, being manipulated and having to strive cunningly-all that is lifted away. A wild shy honest delight steals into you. You breathe in a apart of your being that had unconsciously been constricted." Lois Crisler« less