On this afternoon’s hike across the western side of Edgeoya Island, it wasn’t so much the things surrounding us that captured our imaginations.

It was those that were absent. And they left their traces everywhere.

Across the tiny tundra flowers, feathers of eider ducks and Arctic terns. Abandoned amongst the boulders, wind whitened antlers from long ago reindeer. Scattered like sculpture against a backdrop of volcanic hills, whale vertebrae. The walruses we watched this morning returned to our minds as we turned a heavy skull in our hands. Taiga forests of faraway Russia sprang up in conversation as logs crossed our path, carried here by flood and tide. Embedded in the mud, small pieces of fishing tackle from distant boats, and even the tiny hand of a child’s toy.

But the most impressive invisible creature made its presence known by stamping its footprints in the sand. Clawed, weighty, with flattened soles and heavy toes, a polar bear.

The whole scene seemed filled with what was, and it was easy to lose track of time.