wildscape. literary journal

Field Notes, November 2025
by Bea Sophia

1. OBSERVATION

Start before heat hits 40°C.
Before the air quality index turns purple—
the colour that means: stay inside.

                                            You won't stay inside.

2. EQUIPMENT

Bring water. More water.
Water you think you won't need.

Glacier National Park will need
a new name. The glaciers
are leaving. Nobody's decided
what to call a place
where the thing that named it
no longer exists.

                                 "The Park Where Ice Used to Be"
                                      is too honest for a sign.

3. PROTOCOL

Walk until you forget what year it is.
The polar ice is 30% gone.
The ocean rises 3 millimetres
every year—

                              doesn't sound like much
                              until you do the maths on what
                              you might leave behind
                                   if you had anyone
                                         to leave it to.

4. DATA COLLECTION

Stop at the summit.
Document what remains.

The snow you love
arrives later each year.
Sierra snowpack last winter:
40% of normal.

Normal isn't normal any more.

This is what you climbed for:
white silence
that doesn't apologise
for disappearing.

5. PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE

Take pictures.
You'll want proof you saw this.

Your hypothetical children
won't believe you.

                               (Whose children?
                                    Never mind.
                                          Keep walking.)

6. DESCENT

Come down before dark.
The trail you climbed
will flood next spring
when the snow melts
too fast for the ground
to hold it.

Everything you love: temporary.

That's not new.

What's new: knowing exactly
how temporary. Having the data.

7. NOTES

At home, shower off ash.
Check the news.
Another record broken:
                   hottest June on record
                   driest July on record
                   worst wildfire season on record

       since last year.

8. CONCLUSION

Plan the next hike.

You will go
even though you know.



                             Especially because.

about the author // Bea Sophia