Is the allure that it is disappearing? Ephemeral?
I don’t think so. I think it is the embodiment of the Earth’s most impressive forces—to freeze, thaw, rain down, evaporate—to be so powerful as to cut and move mountains, to carve valleys, feed diverse ecosystems and find its way, however distant, back to the sea.
When all systems are well and whole the cycle can repeat.
Cyclic—
like salmon
Cyclic—
like forest and fire
Cyclic—
like death and life
again and again from the soil.
For this to happen the systems must remain whole and healthy.
We cannot take too much, return too little or destroy what ultimately we depend on. We depend on ice in more profound ways than we are drawn to it.
We are in awe, we are confounded, some journey to the cracking edges, the calving toes to hear the thunder, witness the retreat—to stand before and experience the incredible forces.
Its beauty and reality lift us and startle us at the same time.
The answers to our current state of change are before us. They cannot be ignored. We cannot un-know. Each one of us, and collectively, can make a difference and we must.
You will watch the ice change in your lifetime and its impacts will touch our lives and span generations beyond us. Think of the people who need this ice today—and who will need it tomorrow. Let’s think of them while work through what can feel daunting or even ridiculous, while we listen to each other and negotiate, while we put the incredible power of our human will into creating solutions and change that builds us up as oppose to tears us down.
At the core of our existence and our time here—what legacy do we want to leave?