The Journey of a Glacial River

Follow a single snowflake from a windless high snowfield down to the salt water, a journey of two centuries in one direction only. Be buried into blue glacier ice with a breath of old sky sealed inside, ride the slowest river there is, and emerge at the ice cave where the young river is born, milky with the flour of ground mountains. Then down through the braided gravel plains, into a turquoise lake that sorts the sunlight, through pine forests where a small brown bird walks underwater, and out at last across the mudflats to the sea, where the sun is already lifting the water to begin again.

The ending, given away now, per house rules: only water, going the one way it can go, at whatever pace it is given. There is nothing else to wait for, which is the point.

The first minute

However the day has gone, it is over now. It is done with. It has nothing more to ask of you. Let your shoulders come down. Let the bed take your whole weight. Nothing tonight needs carrying any further. Let your hands fall open. Let your jaw loosen. Let your breathing find its own slower pace. Nothing here needs watching. Nothing needs deciding. Nothing is waiting on you. Tonight we are going to follow water. One long journey, in one direction only. It begins as a snowflake, high on a mountain, and it ends in the sea. In between it…

Why this one works at night

Water never has to choose. It goes the one way it can go, at whatever pace it is given, and tonight you can go with it, downhill the whole way. The pace is downhill, all the way, and the whole of it is blue ice, cold water, calm. Nothing in it asks to be followed closely, which is what makes it easy to let go of.

“…Actually in it — in the ice itself, moving between the crystals, in ways nobody has fully worked out—”

The kind of sentence people fall asleep during