The Magic of Broken Patterns: Discovering a Snowy Owl’s Nest in the Arctic
Our minds have evolved to highlight patterns.
We don’t just notice consistent patterns; we also register when a pattern is suddenly interrupted. Take the experience of standing by a busy highway. Our brains quickly adapt to the hum of cars whizzing by, but we instinctively notice when there’s a brief lull — a momentary stillness. That break in the noise feels almost jarring.
The same phenomenon occurs when we observe landscapes.
Look out over a forest, and you’ll see a rhythm to it — the way the trees spread, competing for sunlight, the arrangement of plants beneath the canopy. There’s an underlying order, a symmetry, that makes us feel as though we’re moving through something structured, something regular. But if you come upon a clearing in that forest, it’s as if the landscape has suddenly paused. The break in the pattern stands out, demanding attention. In that moment, we can’t help but wonder: why the change? What caused this gap in the trees?
The beauty of these irregularities is that they invite exploration. A break in the patterns of the world is an invitation for wonder and curiosity.
They pull us in, pushing us to understand the anomaly and ask what lies beyond the regularity.
One of my favorite personal experiences of this kind came during an expedition to the High Arctic in 2014. Our group of five had traveled to Borup Fiord Pass, a remote valley on Ellesmere Island with a sulfur-rich spring ecosystem that feeds up under and sometimes through a glacier (we were there for research related to the spring system).
On one of the days in the valley, my friend and fellow graduate student, Chris Trivedi, and I found ourselves left behind as our doctoral advisors, Alexis Templeton, John Spear, and researcher Steve Grasby, had the opportunity to take a helicopter to explore some other regional sites. So, Chris and I set off on our own adventure to hike through the valley.
The landscape at Borup Fiord Pass was a stark palette of greys, browns, whites, and blues — rocks, ice, and sediment, with only scattered patches of hardy Arctic vegetation.
That morning, as we climbed to a high vantage point, we noticed something that immediately broke the monotony of the colors below us: a vivid patch of green and red on a distant hilltop.
It seemed out of place in the arid, barren surroundings.
The biologist in me instantly thought of the green of living things. Certainly it must be some plant life rimming the hilltop, but why? What was this splash of life in such a seemingly lifeless place?
Drawn by curiosity, we hiked toward the hill.
As we got closer, we saw that the colors came from a ring of grasses crowning the top of the hill. Within the circle of green and red was an even smaller ring, encircling a central depression. It was instantly clear that this was a bird’s nesting site.
As we investigated further, we found evidence that confirmed our hunch: owl pellets.
Inside the compacted hair and feathers, a quick cut with my pocketknife revealed small bones — likely from lemmings or other Arctic mammals. We had discovered what we believed to be a snowy owl’s nest.
Nearby, in the dried mud of a shallow creek bed, we spotted talon prints, marking the owl’s presence as it had likely come to drink.
While we never saw the owl itself, everything pointed to its existence.
The grassy ring, unusual for the area, was likely seeded from the owl’s diet and waste. As the owl deposited bits of its meals into the nest — mammals it had hunted and partly digested — it also introduced the seeds that grew into the grasses crowning the hill.
This irregularity in the landscape — life disrupting the desolation — became a focal point, a break in the pattern of the arctic valley.
And serendipity had it that we would be left behind that day on our hike into the valley to spot the break in the pattern from afar.
There is as much wonder to be found in the breaks from nature’s order as there is in the order itself. The mystery of the unexpected invites us to ask questions, to explore, and to discover. The snowy owl’s nest was a perfect example of this: life breaking through the stark regularity of the landscape, showing us that magic can happen when we pay attention to what doesn’t fit.