(The following is a story beginning to unfold in my head. You're welcome to preview and follow along as the chapters develop, just be aware this is a long term project.)
The ice is melting. In every direction as far as the horizon there is ice. To the polar bear, this frozen emptiness is home. It is the only home Peter the Polar Bear knows. To Peter, melting ice means an end to his world. It is a fearful thought. Yet all his senses justify what he fears. He hears the cracking ice shelf under his feet. He smells unfamiliar scents as warmer salt waters encroach on his hunting grounds. He feels the sun's heat hanging in the air like it never did before. He tastes the coming calamity in the unforgiving southern winds. But mostly, he sees it.
All around him, Peter's world is disappearing one treasured ice scape at a time. His family's territory, his whole living history gives way more and more each season to the rising ocean, as surely as the night gives way to the rising sun at dawn. Only there is nothing glorious about this disturbing dawning of a new age. If fact, with each passing day, each passing ice berg, despair grows deeper roots in his community, and fearful talk is on every one's tongue.
But Peter has a plan. Or if not exactly a plan yet, he has a dream. Amidst all the turmoil and struggle, as the various groups in Polar Bear Nation realign their daily lives, a heroic vision settled in Peter's heart, relentlessly teasing at him for weeks. The notion tugged at his thinking, quieted his doubts, persistently persuaded his emotions, until just days ago now, Peter finally accepted the possibility of it. The short of it was this, Peter stopped asking why me? and started asking why not me? The dream was his, and now it was his calling to make it come true.
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