Augustine “Augie” Lofthouse, observing the first dawn since the season of days-long darkness in the Arctic, takes in the frozen landscape and contemplates his younger years. He recalls relocating “whenever his environment rejected him, as it often did” (4), finding new places to go and more work to do as an astrophysicist. Having spent his life observing the sky and pursuing knowledge of the universe, he stares at the land around him and recognizes how little he truly knows.

Augie imagines what it would be like to live as a bear he observes navigating the mountain ridges, recognizing in it a similar incomprehension of emotions like love. He has only experienced “lesser emotions,” which he avoids through celestial observation, the only thing about which he has ever felt deeper emotions.

Thinking about love reminds Augie of the one woman for whom he’d felt anything remotely close, Jean Sullivan, a doctoral candidate he impregnated in New Mexico. Upon her refusal to obtain an abortion, Augie fled, fearing he wouldn’t love the child. He eventually searched out the child’s name and birthday, sending gifts for several years before losing track of her when she and her mother moved.

After returning to the observatory, winded from age and the three-story climb, Augie searches for

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