Impermanence

We must make good use of this life for the time that we have left, this brief flash of light, like the sun appearing through the clouds.

– Kalu Rinpoche

This is one of my favorite images from my time in the Aysen region of Chilean Patagonia. My team and I were a week into an Ice to Ocean expedition, where we were investigating the proposed hydro dams on Rios Baker and Pascua. We had traversed the Northern Ice Cap, wended our way through forests thick with lenga and alerce trees, and skipped alongside crystalline rivers. We were on track to boat across Lago Colonia, a 5-mile long, 1,000-foot deep lake, surrounded by 6,000-foot cliffs—impassible without a boat. From there, we intended to trek another 15 miles down the Colonia River Valley to its confluence with Rio Baker and float the Baker to Tortel, where, as Chilean poet laureate Pablo Neruda wrote, “the river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea”.

What we saw this day changed everything—we were peering into a massive abyss, a vacant lakebed, sheets of sediment slumping around its edge, relic stands of ancient trees poking up from the scoured bottom, a bathtub ring signifying the previous water level. The lake was gone. Ahead of us we could see a massive—and now exposed—glacial wall that had served to dam up the flow of Rio Cachet to form Lago Cachet Dos. After some conversation, we determined the lake had been full a mere two weeks prior. We were witnessing the aftermath of a massive geologic event—a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF)—caused by a warming planet, melting ice, and pent up hydrostatic pressure that drove the water in the lake to seek escape. And, she did. Slowly and persistently she widened the path beneath the glacier—a subglacial flow that kept the lake, Lago Cachet Dos, in equilibrium with Lago Colonia on the downstream side of the glacier, 5 miles below—and in a sudden burst, blew off the snout of the glacier, scattering icebergs like shrapnel across the outwash plane, and releasing a tsunami to rush through the watershed in a tidal bore of energy.

The tale does not end here. Among other things, the wall of water joined the Rio Baker downstream and caused Chile’s most voluminous river to run upstream for 15 miles, and we were airlifted out of the field and several days later, boated the Baker to witness mud lines coating the trees thirty feet up. Yet, most indelible for me was the lesson of impermanence—on all time scales. What we perceive to be semi-permanent or slowly evolving, say within the timeframe of our human lifespan, may not be so. Instead, with a spectacular flexing of hydrologic power, Mother Water etch-a-sketched a landscape with the blink of an eye. And so, too, does this happen in our lives—with a sudden loss or an unexpected windfall. By cultivating fluidity in our thinking, we can learn to better release the pain of great loss, and we can position ourselves for positive change, knowing that whatever we are experiencing in the moment is not permanent.