High above treeline,
a mountain goat stands where forests stop reaching.
The stone beneath her hooves was carved by glaciers
that retreated from these peaks ten thousand years ago.


Ice once filled these basins,
thick enough to grind valleys into shape
and leave sheer walls in its wake.
She moves across that memory without hesitation.
Her hooves split and spread,
hard edges catching rock,
soft pads gripping what looks like a wall, not a trail.

An animal built for slopes shaped in a time
we can barely comprehend.
Her ancestors followed the cold itself 
tracking retreating ice north and upward
when the last Ice Age loosened its hold.

They remained when forests climbed.

They remained when humans arrived.
From this height, the world below looks temporary.

She lowers her head to feed on alpine grass
no taller than a hand.
She is not ancient.
But the ground she trusts remembers ice,
remembers oceans that once covered this stone,
remembers mountains rising and wearing down again.
The Rockies hold a timeline
longer than memory.

The goat stands inside that clock.
And something about watching her 
balanced on rock that remembers glaciers 
has a way of stretching our own sense of time.

When you measure life against ice,
the urgency of our day loses some of its edge.

​