Author: Anna Hamilton
Glacier National Park. Many Glacier, year 2050.
You adjust your iGoggles and look at the rock face. You blink twice, fast, indicating you want to do a search. You look at a result towards the bottom, hyperlinked words superimposed over the trees climbing up the mountain, and blink twice again. “Many Glacier,” the webpage says. “Thousands of years ago, snow compacted into sheets on the high mountains to form glaciers. As these glaciers moved, they slowly carved out the geological features you see today…today, due to the Great Anthropogenic Climate Shift and the resulting rise in world temperature, no glaciers remain in Many Glacier.”
Your eyes sweep over the lake, low and stagnant but the same crystal blue as in the archival photos; the brittle skeletons of trees left by fire and beetles, the immovable stone itself. And suddenly you want there to be glaciers, something cold and remote, unmeasurable, secure from man’s power, wild and mysterious…but all you see are the juttings and inlets of the rock face—those at least seem unchangeable. You take off your iGoggles and stare at the rock and do not look away for a long time.