The Only Lasting Truth

All that you touch you change

All that you change changes you.

The only lasting truth is change.

Octavia Butler

Recently I returned from a short visit to Glacier National Park, which was a chance to visit with old friends as well as to take in the magnificent scenery. It has been a long time since I visited that park, and there were many memories held for me in the peaks and valleys of that glaciated landscape.

I was with friends I have known and loved since my early twenties, over fifty years ago. Decades have passed, and there have been many changes in both of our lives, including significant losses, but our connection lasts and is strong, like the mountain landscape.

My husband and I went on our first date there, visiting Lake McDonald on a chilly November day, where we stood on the lakeshore and dreamed of possibilities. The Izaak Walton Inn where we had dinner that night has been sold, remodeled, renamed and was hardly recognizable, the historic facade now painted, modernized, the soul of the place missing. I grieved the changes and grieved my husband’s death one year ago. Yes, we dreamed of possibilities. His sudden death was not one of them.

Several years ago I went on a short backpacking trip to Sperry Chalet to visit a friend who was spending the summer there changing beds and cleaning rooms. We enjoyed a spectacular hike to Gunsight Pass and a fine dinner at the lodge. A few years later that lodge would burn to the ground.

The changes are much more dramatic than this one woman’s loss. Our captain on the boat tour of Lake McDonald pointed out the diminution of the glaciers that give the park its name, jokingly suggesting that it might have to be renamed Glacierless National Park.

Perhaps there is no better example of the constant nature of change than a river. A few years ago I hiked to Enchanted Valley in the Olympics, a place that must surely be one of the most beautiful on the planet with dozens of waterfalls tumbling down into the broad valley. But something had changed. The historic chalet, a two-story hunting lodge built in 1930, had moved. Heavy spring flooding had caused the south fork of the Quinault River to flood. Park Service employees had placed the structure on logs and rolled it to its new location.

I felt strangely ambivalent about this change. Yes, the historic structure had been preserved, but the valley seemed as though it had been swept clean. The old building no longer seemed to belong there. For a service that works hard to preserve the natural order of things, it might have been better to let the old building be swept away by the river. It will not be there forever, nor will I. The rivers change course; the glaciers are retreating. . .and this old woman will never again carry her heavy pack to Enchanted Valley.