Lake Agassiz

   Coming up to Moorhead, Minnesota, one is struck by the absence of topography. As the Dilworth-Glyndon exit approaches the flatness is only punctuated by distant windbreaks, rows of trees planted to shelter a homestead.

   And then it strikes- the knowledge that one is on the bed of the long departed Lake Agassiz. Where your vehicle rolls now was once at the depth of several hundred feet, at the bottom of a body of water that rivaled Lake Superior in size and volume. How many millions of fish once swam here; how many trillions of other, smaller life forms lived and died here? And now we, in our mechanical vehicles, are the dominant life form. And as the denizens of Lake Agassiz have vanished with scarcely a trace, so shall we all.