SALTWATER

Imagine you’re a glacial erratic carried by ice for hundreds of miles, well over ten thousand years ago, to settle here. As the ice recedes, your emerging new reality is a bayside beach that bathes you in saltwater twice daily.

Over subsequent millennia those high tides smooth your rock face and bring barnacles that attach to your base. At some point humans arrive, too, scrambling over you at low tide, possibly fishing from you, maybe even perching to enjoy the sunset.

A rising sea level may submerge you one day, because unlike other creatures who inhabit the intertidal zone, you are immobile, stuck here during this interglacial period.

Until that immersion arrives, you still warm from direct sunlight, still feel the pitter-patter of raindrops, joined by the seemingly eternal ebb and flow of the tides.