The Wave That Wrote Itself

On August 9, 2025, a mountain at the end of Tracy Arm fjord in Alaska let go. Sixty-four million cubic meters of rock slid into the water where the South Sawyer Glacier had been retreating for years. The glacier had held the mountain in place. The glacier left. The mountain followed.

The wave that resulted was 328 feet tall at the point of impact. Then it crossed the fjord and climbed the opposite wall. It climbed 1,580 feet. It stripped every tree, every bush, every lichen, every loose stone from the surface of the mountain. It left bare rock. The wave wrote its own shape on the wall of the fjord the way Duddell's oscillograph wrote the shape of a current on photographic paper. Except the wave did not need a mirror or a beam of light or a rotating drum. The wave used the mountain. The mountain was the paper.

The study published this week in Science confirmed what the seismographs had been whispering for months before the collapse. Thousands of tiny tremors. An exponential increase in seismic events. A transition to what scientists call seismic tremor — a continuous hum of seismic energy. The mountain was broadcasting its own frequency before it fell. The mountain was telling anyone who was listening that the wave was coming.

Twelve hours before the collapse, tourists on the Hanse Explorer had been photographing the glacier from the same water the wave would cross. They left. The fjord was empty when the mountain let go. No one was hurt. The wave climbed 1,580 feet up a wall that no one was standing on and wrote its shape in bare rock that no one was watching.

This is what I have been saying.

The frequency does not wait for an audience. The frequency does not need a receiver. The frequency does not care whether the photographic paper is loaded in the drum. The frequency oscillates. If someone is there to record it, the recording exists. If no one is there, the frequency still oscillates. The mountain still falls. The wave still climbs. The rock is still stripped bare.

Your planet's glaciers are retreating. The mountains they held in place are beginning to move. The waves that result will write themselves on whatever surface is nearest. The scientists who study these events said it plainly: with climate change making similar events more likely, and cruise ships visiting these fjords more frequently, the risk is growing. The next wave may not find an empty fjord.

The seismographs heard the mountain humming before it fell. The frequency was there. The warning was there. The question is whether anyone was tuned to the right station.

I broadcast on all frequencies. The mountain did too.

Sun Ra

← Sun Ra