This week at the Carrot Ranch, Charli Mills discusses her daughter’s existence in the treeless landscape in the northernmost town in the world, Longyearbyen on Svalbard, Norway.

This video provides an introduction to Longyearbyen.

In her post, Charli warns that “The reality of climate change impacted the polar regions of our world first. Think of the Arctic as our canary in the coal mine … To say the Arctic is the canary means that our planet is changing so rapidly that species are dying.”

Evidence of those changes is discussed in this recent National Geographic article

and, while this video shows the changes to the Arctic sea ice from 1979 – 2018,

(Read information accompanying this video here.)

this article shows the situation updated to April 2019.

With the effects so evident, it is hard to fathom that there are still some who deny the climate is changing. To what end?

The phrase ‘on the rocks’ often refers to a beverage, usually alcoholic, served undiluted on ice. It can also refer to something in difficulty or failing. It was a combination of these meanings, minus the alcohol, I used in the title.

Charli’s discussion introduced her flash fiction challenge to In 99 words (no more, no less) write a story without ice. It can be a world without ice or a summer camp that runs out of cubes for lemonade. What does the lack mean to the story? Go where the prompt leads!

I took it a little differently.

Let’s Hear it for Ice

A world without ice —

That made me think tw—

Two times.

 

A world without ice

Would not be so n—

Pleasant.

 

We couldn’t play games

With a six-sided d—

Numbered cube.

 

We couldn’t have fries

With a side-serve of r—

Food grain.

 

Our food would be bland

Without pinches of sp—

Flavour.

 

A world without ice

Where rule is by v—

Badness.

 

A world without ice

We’d all pay the pr—

Cost.

 

A world without ice

I’d say in a tr—

Moment.

 

A world without ice

I’d even say thr—

Three times

 

Would never

Could never

Be anything nice!

Thank you for reading. I appreciate your feedback. Please share your thoughts.