Rock flour

Waters swirl. The senses take them in. All the senses. The senses seem satisfied, even if somewhat inundated.  

The sound – deafening rushing in the canyons, against stony mountain walls, roaring waterfalls – contrasting the soft soothing ripples, the gentle lapping waves in lakes.
The taste of the cold blue glacier water, an aquamarine stream at the mouth of an imposing glacier. I bend down in awe, greedily filling our bottles, wishing I could have somehow carried a barrel. 

The touch – so cold, so pure, so fierce. I look at the swirly walls of canyons. Water that has created swirls in the stone, so easily, so effortlessly, like fingers running through sand.

The sight – brilliant colors set against imposing mountains and glaciers - the aquamarines, the blues, the turquoises, the milky-whites… My breath stops several times, as we turn a corner in the mountains, or suddenly come face to face with the waters, startled by the iridescence. 

The waters of the Canadian Rockies…

The glacier tour guide explains the colors. Rock flour, he tells us, is the fine silt caused by glacial erosion and grinding of rocks. Glaciers grind up the stone. Fiercely, minutely, permanently. This rock flour is then either carried by wind or flows into meltwater. It is through this glacial milk and sedimentation, that the ground up stone lends color to the waters.

And what resplendent colors. Turquoise, aquamarine, blues, greens, whites… so beautiful… so entwined in their interactions with their surroundings, they take on their colors. Permanently.

The intertwining of nature…  

glacier spring

So, if we are part of nature, are there rock flours in our surroundings? Ground up in our being?  

What color/ colors are we? Where do we get these colors from? Who/what is the source of our colors? Perhaps there are puddles of colors inside us – some dazzling, other dark. Some origins that we know of, others unknown.   

Can we choose which rock flours we want to allow to be part of us? And which we would rather not? And if they must be, maybe they can remain no more than a tiny puddle…

For staring at the waters in the Rockies, one thing is apparent - rock flours can lead to much beauty… hopefully it can be so - with humans, as well…