I’ve been thinking about mathematics lately, wondering if equations can explain the patterns I see around me. Flying over the western border of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in a 1974 Cessna, I stare down at the landscape from above. From this angle, tundra looks like an M. C. Escher sketch—angular shapes painted in summer’s yellow-greens. The plane banks and I press my face against scratched glass, searching for animals and birds that look like tiny pieces of dust marring a photograph. White blobs on water mean swans; on land, they typically signal the presence of a single snowy owl (at least at this time of year—any sensible polar bear would be far out of sight on the ice floes). Herds of caribou show up as brown spots en masse with occasional glimpses of antlered protrusions. A blurred coffee-colored shock of fur may be a lone musk ox or, less likely, a brown bear.

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