Today in Episode 2 of Arctic Dreams Barry Lopez celebrates one of the few large mammals to have survived the ice-age, the muskox, with its sweeping curtain of guard-hair and preternatural vision, and considers how it has almost been hunted almost to extinction over the centuries.
In his breath-taking natural, social and cultural history of the Arctic, Lopez reveals the essential mystery and beauty of a continent that has enchanted man's imagination and ambition since time immemorial.
Written well over a quarter of a century ago, Lopez's visionary account of his journey across the polar caps is a celebration of the Arctic in all its guises. A hostile landscape of ice, freezing oceans and dazzling skyscapes, home to millions of diverse animals and people, it is also the backdrop to massive migrations by land, sea and air and the setting of epic exploratory voyages.

In timeless, prophetic prose, as meditative and memorable as the land it describes, Arctic Dreams poses fundamental questions about how we should cherish our ever more vulnerable planet.
Arctic Dreams was written by Barry Lopez.
It is read by Kyle Soller and abridged by Richard Hamilton
The producer is Karen Holden Show less