The House of God

 by Sarah Song in January 2023

After a long time, I went to Colorado in early January 2023. Along the highway, the view of snow-covered mountain peaks against the blue sky was unfolding. The landscape of snow-covered peaks rising majestically over the vast expanse of plains seemed almost sacred, as if inhabited by mountain spirits. “Kilimanjaro is a snow covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Maasai ‘Ngaye Ngai’, the House of God,” begins Ernest Hemingway's novel The Snows of Kilimanjaro, published in 1936. Looking at the snow-covered peaks year-round, I wonder if Hemingway was inspired by such sacredness as he contemplated death while writing his novel.

Kilimanjaro is located in Tanzania, Africa, with the Furtwängler Glacier surrounding its summit. It is named after Walter Furtwängler who climbed there in 1912, but this glacier has reportedly melted by 85 percent between 1912 and 2011. Furthermore, at COP (Conference of Parties) 27 held in Egypt last November, the UN reported that it will disappear completely before 2050. Glaciers in other regions like the Pyrenees between France and Spain, the Dolomites in the Italian Alps, and Yellowstone National Park in the United States are also expected to vanish before 2050. While some may be irreversible, they implored that with our best efforts, we could save other glaciers around the world.

Around 580 billion tons of glaciers are disappearing annually, melting at a rate equivalent to five million Eiffel Towers' worth of ice each year. For local communities depending on glaciers for freshwater, drinking water, and food production, this is a matter of survival. Gretel Ehrlich, who has visited Greenland multiple times since 1993, vividly depicted this situation in her essay Rotten Ice. In it, she warned, "The amount of natural disasters and uninhabitable areas due to rising sea levels pales in comparison to a piece of the iceberg. Even a tiny portion of the methane trapped beneath the Arctic sea floor, if released into the atmosphere, would lead to the extinction of humanity."

The Earth is a collective one life. This life, much like the protagonist Harry in the novel "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," is confronting approaching death. In the story, Harry, while taking photos in the African plains, gets his leg punctured by a thorn, leading to a bacterial infection. Stranded as the truck that carried him and his companions to the hospital breaks down, Harry waits for a plane to transport him while the infection spreads. In his weakened state, he engages in arguments and reminisces about the past while drinking, looking at the snow-covered peaks. Despite knowing he could fight the bacteria if his cells fought back, he spends his last hours in trivial disputes and reminiscing about the past. Just like Harry, if the individual cells that make up this massive Earth don't collectively fight back, the impending death is inevitable.

Since the beginning of the year, California has been under a state of emergency due to winter storms. Children are being swept away by floods, roads and homes are submerged, dozens have already lost their lives, and villages that were evacuated in 2018 due to pouring mud have been evacuated again. The estimated damage is over 120 trillion won (approximately 1.2 billion USD), and Bloomberg reported that the global insurance industry's annual losses due to climate change have exceeded 100 billion USD (about 125 trillion won), making such events the "new normal." Now, it's early January 2023. The Earth's cries will only grow louder.

Everywhere I went in Colorado, the mountains and lakes were covered in white snow. At Dillon Lake, where I walked with my friend, someone had built a snowman from fluffy snow. Behind the snowman, people were enjoying winter fishing on the frozen lake that looked like untouched white cake frosting. The blue sky shone brilliantly over the encircled mountains, like a backdrop. The glittering snow in the sunlight seemed to promise a bright and beautiful immortal life. However, like the dying Harry who remembered ‘the deserter who came with his feet bleeding in the snow’ and thought of the bloody wound and pain, snow can also be pain and death for someone. If we fail to protect the snow-covered 'House of God', the “rotten ice” that Gretel Erlich spoke of will bring pain and death to all of us.