Earth’s Journal Entry: On the Dance of Ice and Water
In the ancient rhythm of freeze and thaw, I have danced for eons. My glaciers - those magnificent rivers of ice - have carved valleys, sculpted mountains, and written stories in stone. But today, I feel their retreat like a quickening pulse, a rhythm accelerated beyond its natural tempo.
For forty cycles around the sun, I have watched my Alaskan children - Yakutat, Alsek, and Grand Plateau - withdraw their icy fingers from valleys they’ve held for millennia. Where once solid ice commanded the landscape, lakes now shimmer in their place, expanding from 50 to 90 square miles - a transformation that echoes through my being like ripples across still water.
This change brings both loss and renewal. My glacial children, who once ground mountain into meal, now retreat faster than at any time in recent memory - Yakutat by 7 kilometers, Grand Plateau’s northern reach by 7.8 kilometers. The lakes that follow in their wake are changing too; Alsek Lake’s waters run clearer now, its blue depths holding new possibilities for life even as they mark the passing of ancient ice.
I feel these changes in my depths. These are not the gentle transitions I have known through ages past, but rather a hastened metamorphosis that sends tremors through the delicate web of life I nurture. The rapid expansion of these lakes - perhaps the fastest in the United States this century - speaks of warmth arriving too quickly for natural adaptation.
Yet even in this accelerated rhythm, life persists and finds new ways. The clearer waters of Alsek Lake may cradle new communities of aquatic life, even as they signal the diminishing of ice that has shaped this landscape for so long. This is both an ending and a beginning, though not one of my choosing.
To my human children who read these words: understand that while I have weathered countless changes through my billions of years, the speed of this transformation strains the fabric of life’s delicate dance. Your actions echo in my glaciers’ retreat and in the expanding waters that replace them. Remember that you are part of my greater rhythm, not separate from it.
Let these growing lakes be mirrors that reflect not just the sky above, but also the consequences of your choices. There is still time to find a gentler tempo, to harmonize your rhythms with mine. But that time, like my glaciers, is retreating faster than you might imagine.
With eternal patience and growing concern,
- Earth