Driving on the Dalton highway includes random encounters with precious wildlife. We were driving late night returning from a field day in the tundra when we came across a muskoxen. We were too late to react and take good pictures. Instead, we were drawn into this beautiful animal’s eyes starring at us in the middle of the night. At some point it decided to retreat from the highway and into the snow-covered tundra. In his book “Shopping for porcupine: A life in arctic Alaska” author Seth Kantner writes the following for the Alaskan muskox: “In their eyes is the soft and thoughtful look of a million years on the planet. Like the caribou, they have something we could have learn; muskoxen’s secret to survival is simply to not waste energy.” Elsewhere he writes “This is an animal whose ancestors walked the Pleistocene beside our own, foraging the steppe-like tundra and stony hilltops.”