The Weight of Water

The earth remembers the weight of ice long after it has turned to water. We walk over ground that was once held in a frozen grip, a pressure so immense it rearranged the stone. There is a silence in these high places that feels like waiting. It is not a lack of sound, but a presence of something older than our own brief history. We look at the water and see only the surface, forgetting the slow, grinding work that carved the basin. To stand before such a vast, blue stillness is to realize how little we actually hold. We are merely passing through a landscape that is still in the middle of its own long, cold exhale. If the mountain could speak of what it lost to the thaw, would we have the patience to listen, or would we simply turn away from the cold?

Ryan Marquis has captured this quiet endurance in his photograph titled Overlooking Skilak. It reminds me that some things are meant to be observed rather than understood. Does the water feel the absence of the ice?