There are approximately 200 glaciers on the Olympic Peninsula. A new study says every last one of them will disappear by 2070. The winters are coming later and leaving earlier. The snowpack is too thin. Mountains like these, close to the ocean and low in elevation, won’t be able to hang on to the kind of snow needed to maintain glaciers thanks to climate change.
I barely know what to do with this information. I try to mourn, and then I get tired.
Outside, it’s pouring a deluge of spring rain and the tulips next to the house are heavily considering opening. In the garden, arugula is sprouting and the beans are finally unfurling their first wrinkly leaves. I suppose plopping seeds into the dirt another year means there’s some kind of courage or misguided hope still within me.
What happens when the glaciers disappear? The scientists involved with the study have some ideas which they identify as “disastrous,” but the truth is that no one really knows what happens when an entire mountain range loses its glaciers. Ecosystems collapse probably. Millions of creatures die.
Last time I was on the peninsula, I saw a colorful garden of “Trump 2020” signs, a billboard that said, “Trump won.” I also saw the glaciers collecting along the mountaintops as the ferry brought me in, shimmering in the morning sun, completely oblivious.
What can I do besides pay my respect to the 50 percent of glaciers that have already melted out of the peninsula, and hold my breath for the 200 that remain?
I’ll be 77 when the last glacier melts from the Olympics. Maybe I’ll be better equipped to mourn by then. Maybe I’ll still be tossing arugula seeds into the earth, waiting for their heart-shaped sprouts to wiggle up through the dirt, somehow holding on to something like hope.