In salt water, there’s salt and beautiful purple mussels. That’s a fine and wonderful thing. In fresh water, though, such as Okanagan Lake here in the foggy mountains of winter, there are freshwater molluscs. They’re usually snails with delicate corkscrew shells, but sometimes they’re giant, glowing jewels from the deep…

They’re gorgeous, and even more so with the addition of snow (not of salt).

That’s the freshwater way. They are also highly endangered. Technological, post-biological civilization and freshwater molluscs just don’t get along. Next, we’ll be drinking technologically altered water. Oh, wait. We are.