A Glacial Rant

Think about it: You’re a few million gazillion years old and glaciers have been sawing at your body for a long ass time. You’re no stranger to the forces of frozen water. You’ve been plucked, abraded, cracked, and pounded and now vast portions of what used to be your solid, beautifully shaped, rocky face have been crushed into a fine glacial powder and pushed to lower ground.
For years on end you were buried in a gigantic ice cap, lobe and tongue glaciers sprouting every which way, growing as much as 2,000 feet deep. Then there was the melting. The refreezing. The melting again. Until finally you shone your rocky face into the light of day after an incalculably lengthy nap and, viola!, there were biped creatures hanging around and they decided to call you and your friends The Wallowas.
Meanwhile, the cirque that used to be your face—they don’t call it a depression for nothing, though you prefer the term “rock amphitheatre”—started getting a lot of attention. There were photographers and postcards, Wallowa high peaks calendars, the whole bit. It all made you feel a little naked and you thought, occasionally, that life under that ice cap hadn’t been so bad after all. These humans are all just a flash in time anyway, so you’re waiting, patient and wise as mountains are known to be, until the next great Ice Age is upon us.

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