I was one of the uncountable snow flakes that fell that day. Time was the same, it snowed, it rained, drizzle fell, fog burned off and the sunshine broke through the clouds. Before I fell to earth I had my last glimpse of the sun. Then all darkened with clouds and more snow.
The sun became a memory.
Miles away, the First Peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast were emerging from a dark past and beginning to see wood, gold, bark, ivory and sea shells as forms of art. Ancient mythic images, older than time began to take on a form...meaningful to the soul of these people.
I was a single snow flake with a crystal form all my own. There was never another like me, then or even now. I did not feel loneliness; within minutes, I was covered with others that were similar to me but never entirely the same as me. Deeper I sank. More snow fell on me. Deeper and deeper I was buried in my white tomb.
I long ceased to see the sun, sky, clouds and moon. The wind ceased it's motion for me. It was all darkness and stillness; total aloneness among zillions like me. Far above me, lone hunters slushed the snows. An occasional mountain climber. Once, and I could feel his soul, a lonely man with a troubled mind, went over me looking for his place to find his God. He went to a nearby mountain and, crouched against the rain and wind, waited for his God to come and take him back home.
I was slowly losing the sense of what I was. I was losing my "snowness" and ever so gradually becoming less of a tiny flake and more of a crystal. The process was slow. I united with others like me and we morphed into true glacial ice.
All this was not totally quiet. There were distant moans and shrieks as the glacial ice began to move, layer over layer, downward...toward any depth that the terrain allowed.
After many, many years, I, now a part of a vast collection of other crystals, began to see the light above me. The youthful summer snows were melting away and we, now the grand old parts of the glacier were visible. I could now hear and feel the piercing of the crampons of glacial researchers as they made their way over my surface. Nearby, an errant solo mountaineer made a slight misstep and slid into a giant crack in my surface. He cried out. He died quickly. But I can still hear the echoes of his pain throughout the expanse of ice.
One day, a teenage researcher chopped me free from the bed I lived on. With the point of his ice axe he isolated my as a single crystal. He took me between his fingers and held me up to the sun. I saw the sun again. It was as I remembered it. I proudly reflected and refracted the spectrum and allowed the rays to spread like starlight. He turned me over in his hands several times before tossing me away.
Very soon I will melt away and join the icy flow down glacier to the sea. I'll be gone for a very long time, probably.
But I'll be back.
The sun became a memory.
Miles away, the First Peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast were emerging from a dark past and beginning to see wood, gold, bark, ivory and sea shells as forms of art. Ancient mythic images, older than time began to take on a form...meaningful to the soul of these people.
I was a single snow flake with a crystal form all my own. There was never another like me, then or even now. I did not feel loneliness; within minutes, I was covered with others that were similar to me but never entirely the same as me. Deeper I sank. More snow fell on me. Deeper and deeper I was buried in my white tomb.
I long ceased to see the sun, sky, clouds and moon. The wind ceased it's motion for me. It was all darkness and stillness; total aloneness among zillions like me. Far above me, lone hunters slushed the snows. An occasional mountain climber. Once, and I could feel his soul, a lonely man with a troubled mind, went over me looking for his place to find his God. He went to a nearby mountain and, crouched against the rain and wind, waited for his God to come and take him back home.
I was slowly losing the sense of what I was. I was losing my "snowness" and ever so gradually becoming less of a tiny flake and more of a crystal. The process was slow. I united with others like me and we morphed into true glacial ice.
All this was not totally quiet. There were distant moans and shrieks as the glacial ice began to move, layer over layer, downward...toward any depth that the terrain allowed.
After many, many years, I, now a part of a vast collection of other crystals, began to see the light above me. The youthful summer snows were melting away and we, now the grand old parts of the glacier were visible. I could now hear and feel the piercing of the crampons of glacial researchers as they made their way over my surface. Nearby, an errant solo mountaineer made a slight misstep and slid into a giant crack in my surface. He cried out. He died quickly. But I can still hear the echoes of his pain throughout the expanse of ice.
One day, a teenage researcher chopped me free from the bed I lived on. With the point of his ice axe he isolated my as a single crystal. He took me between his fingers and held me up to the sun. I saw the sun again. It was as I remembered it. I proudly reflected and refracted the spectrum and allowed the rays to spread like starlight. He turned me over in his hands several times before tossing me away.
Very soon I will melt away and join the icy flow down glacier to the sea. I'll be gone for a very long time, probably.
But I'll be back.