“The searchers all knew how to decipher winter signs – how, as Russian hunters say, to read the white book. The frozen river was a wind-stripped tabula rasa bearing just enough snow to record a track. But the snow missed nothing: a meticulous record keeper, it captured the story and held it fast. The missing man was a meandering narrative of one line only: a single set of boot tracks leading away and never coming back.” – Journal entry from a quote in The Tiger by John Vaillant.