The air was razor-thin. Even our breath felt like it whispered.

In the vast white silence of Svalbard, we followed wolf tracks across untouched snow. Our guide — a Sámi tracker named Elja — walked ahead with reverence, each step a prayer. He didn’t speak unless the landscape did first.

After hours of walking, we paused beside a ridge. He raised a hand, eyes fixed. In the distance, two Arctic wolves moved like smoke — weightless, unbothered, untouchable. They were never meant to be found, only witnessed.

Elja turned and said, almost in a whisper:
"To follow them is not to conquer. It’s to remember that not everything needs your presence to exist."

That night, under a violet aurora, we understood what he meant.