Glacial Erratics
The Yellowstone Plateau is 8,000 feet above sea level. Ice covered it at least ten times as climate fluctuated
through the Pleistocene epoch. The area of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is littered with granite
boulders, called erratics, that the glaciers dragged from the Beartooth Mountains north of the park.
—David Rains Wallace
1
Expanse of cold, retreating: still the field of influence
looms. Glacial polish on Mt. Washburn. Erratic boulders
strewn over the Yellowstone, set down from atop
a mile of ice—placed, we might say, by conditions.
What we might say is prefigured by ice; ice urged
our northern ancestors, too. Allowed or edged them out.
So I sense the accommodation of ice, and I sense
the sharp limits. I move as I'm allowed among edges
carved by ice. I inhabit or avoid crevices. I visit
silty valleys. I walk over scoured rock. Glacial terrain
is fractal, echoes the old macrocosm, and our human
patterns are shaped by its whim. An age of ice—and now
our most audacious act: to alter the climate, to diminish
the ice of our own accord. We have no idea. Without
parameters set by earth and ice, we have only vague
desire. If our desire is intensified now, mindless,
if we insist on such damage, it's because our desire
wants definition, requires a shape once provided by ice.
2
You might be staring, absent-mindedly, into a thicket
when all of a sudden you're aware of a being. A crypticpatterned form, say, a great horned owl perched perfectly
still: the animal enters awareness. In a similar way,
I was gazing at an erratic, its granite texture layered
with pocks, with lichens and little crevices, when
the glacial age that set the rock down appeared clearly
in my consciousness. The form was there all along,
awaiting my small recognition. Glacial contours loom,
quite visibly, in an iceless terrain. And what is mind
itself but the condensed detritus of ages, a bright-flecked
remnant of the present world. I’m moving over
the Yellowstone flats, among pronghorn, among sage,
among badger dens and bison wallows. Mind is moving
through mind. Like a great flock turning and counterturning,
folding in on itself and then shifting. Like shoals of fish,
like herds. Mind eclipses every norm, in ordinary ways.
Mind is a swarm: is merely world. It's here.
3
The layers: atmosphere to sub-soil, and beneath,
fissures that conduit water and steam. The colors:
from blue to russet, tawny browns, black, exquisite
grays and greens. In the Absaroka Mountains, strata's
exposed, each band an entire age. Some ages are chalky,
some sooty. The oldest are crystaline. Over eons,
slabs of marble shift, while ancient sediments heave.
Change: a chain of volcanoes, some 50 million years ago,
formed the gorgeous range. And constancy: the Absaroka
spans a craton (kratos: Greek for strength), the stable
core of North America, that's survived the merging
and splitting of continents for 500 million years.
Other striations: the glaciers, a recent veneer. Yet
they too shaped the mountains, profoundly. And
now human presence, once trace, melting the last
of the glaciers away. Like glaciers, our presence
is both intense and temporary, capable of sculpting
earth, but easily erased by time.
4
Clouds swell and subside. Aspen leaves twirl
on their stems, gather what sun they can. Pigeons sweep,
then circle, automatic in the sky. If I could enounce
just one thing, it would be the blankness that underlies
this—I'd place it in nature, I'd name it. I'd lend it
dimension, texture; but of course it's the very antithesis
of all that can be described. The universe itself we describe
as the aftermath of the big bang. The glacial erratics,
from the moment they were set down, still
and thus as they are, are they merely aftermaths?
The blankness relies on no precedent; nor does it require
effect. The erratics are of the void—but don't they also
stand alone? They are emblematic of all of sufficiency.
Wasn't my own house, miles away, set down
by the same sweeping void? Isn't my body set in the world
like a gemstone? No artificer placed me,
and yet I'm placed as surely as any massive boulder,
as any walking mountain. Here.