Photo by Stephanie Klepacki on Unsplash

She is beloved – everyone speaks her name. She is alive – both in the landscape and in the dreams of those who call this place home. There are poems written for her. Songs sang to and about her. Stories embedded in offerings placed into her arms.

But she is changing. Her seasonal cycles of advancing and retreating have become longer and more dramatic.

I stood by her side. I listened to her voice. Yet I will never know her the way they know her. She is as deeply of part of them as they are a part of her.

A YEARs-LONG CREATIVE EXPLORATION OF THE CLIMATE THROUGH 100-WORD STORIES • WEEK 19

Photo by Chantal Bilodeau

Mountains hidden behind a thick wall of fog, and more rain in two days than usually falls in a month.

Inside, a little cocoon of inquiry and reflection.

A handful of artists is asking big questions about who we want to be at this historical pinpoint on the earth’s billion-year trajectory –
a moment which holds the possibility of such deep transformation if we dare to recognize what is being asked of us and embrace it.

In search of answers, we step outside. We do know that the path forward must be paved with connection and joy.

A YEARs-LONG CREATIVE EXPLORATION OF THE CLIMATE THROUGH 100-WORD STORIES • WEEK 18

Photo by Robynne Hu on Unsplash

One story holds the promise of unlimited technological progress that will solve all of our problems. The other paints an inevitable apocalypse in all of its gruesome details. In their very extremism, both stories are wrong. The truth lives somewhere in between, in a place we are too terrified to even visit: neither heaven nor hell, but a blurry no man’s land of uncertainty and compromise. We hide our fear behind grand statements and the confident stride of one who knows what’s what. In the process, we forget that it is in that scariest of places that opportunity reveals itself.

Inspiration: We Don’t Know What Will Happen Next

A YEARs-LONG CREATIVE EXPLORATION OF THE CLIMATE THROUGH 100-WORD STORIES • WEEK 17