I stood at the base of the Dachstein last autumn, watching clouds wrap around its limestone face like they've done for 200 million years. My phone buzzed with another notification about climate predictions, economic forecasts, technological timelines. We're obsessed with knowing what comes next.
But here's what struck me that afternoon: these mountains don't care about our predictions.
They've watched empires rise and collapse. They've seen ice ages come and go. They stood silent as Romans marched through these valleys, as medieval salt miners carved tunnels into their flanks, as wars redrew borders around their unchanging forms. And they'll be here long after our most confident forecasts have proven laughably wrong.
The future we imagine is almost never the future we get. Yet the mountains remain.
The Arrogance of Certainty
We love our predictions. Five-year plans. Ten-year forecasts. Century-long climate models. There's something comforting about pretending we know what's coming, about drawing neat lines from present to future and calling it inevitable.
The Salzkammergut has seen enough certainty to know better.
In 1866, the Austrian Empire seemed permanent. The salt trade that had enriched this region for millennia appeared eternal. The social order felt fixed as the mountains themselves. Then came Königgrätz, and everything changed in an afternoon. The empire that had stood for centuries began its slow unraveling, and the salt monopoly that had defined these valleys for 3,000 years ended with the stroke of a bureaucrat's pen.
The mountains didn't notice. They can't.
I think about this when I read breathless articles about the future. How artificial intelligence will reshape everything by 2030. How climate change will make certain regions uninhabitable by 2050. How technology will solve problems we haven't even identified yet. Maybe these predictions are right. Probably some are, partially. But history suggests we're terrible at seeing what actually matters.
In 1900, futurists predicted cities filled with pneumatic tubes and personal airships. They didn't predict the internet. In 1950, scientists were certain we'd have moon bases by 2000. We don't. In 2000, everyone knew the future was dot-com businesses. Then came 2001.
What Mountains Teach About Time Scales
The Hoher Dachstein rises 2,995 meters above sea level. It's been roughly that height for about 200 million years, give or take a few million. During that time, it's been underwater, covered in tropical forests, buried under kilometers of ice, and exposed to wind and rain that would grind any human construction to dust.
It's still there.
Our predictions operate on human timescales. Quarterly earnings. Election cycles. Lifetimes if we're thinking really long-term. We can't help it—we're trapped in our brief moment, trying to extrapolate meaning from the tiny slice of time we occupy. But the mountains exist on geological time, where our entire recorded history is a blink.
This isn't nihilism. It's perspective.
The Future Nobody Predicted
Walk through Hallstatt today and you'll see something nobody in 1990 could have imagined: thousands of Asian tourists photographing a small Austrian village because it became famous in South Korea and China. The village that had quietly mined salt for 7,000 years suddenly became a global phenomenon because of social media platforms that didn't exist when I was born.
The mountains watched this transformation with the same indifference they showed to the Bronze Age miners who first carved tunnels into their sides.
What interests me isn't that we can't predict the future—that's obvious enough. What fascinates me is how the unpredictable future unfolds against the backdrop of the permanent. The peaks don't change, but everything around them does, in ways both dramatic and subtle, expected and shocking.
Consider what's changed in the Salzkammergut in just my lifetime. The salt mines that defined this region for millennia are now tourist attractions. The local dialect is fading as global media homogenizes language. Traditional crafts survive mostly as heritage demonstrations. Climate change is measurably affecting the glaciers—yes, even the mountains aren't entirely immune to change, though their response operates on timescales that make our urgent predictions seem almost quaint.
But the Traunstein still rises 1,691 meters above Bad Ischl. The Wolfgangsee still fills its basin as it has for 18,000 years. The rock faces still shed the same limestone fragments they've been shedding since before humans existed.
What Actually Persists
Here's what I've noticed: the things that last aren't usually the things we predict will last.
The Habsburg Empire seemed eternal. It lasted 600 years and vanished in four. The salt trade seemed permanent. It sustained this region for three millennia and ended in a generation. The certainties of each era—political systems, economic structures, social hierarchies—all proved temporary against the indifferent permanence of stone.
But some things do persist. Not because they're resistant to change, but because they're fundamental. Water still flows downhill. Stone still weathers under rain. Communities still gather. People still need meaning. The mountains still stand.
Living Without Certainty
So what do you do when you realize your predictions are probably wrong? When you understand that the future you're planning for is likely not the future you'll get? When you accept that the mountains will outlast not just you, but every certainty you hold?
You could despair. Some do.
Or you could find freedom in it.
The mountains don't plan. They don't predict. They simply are, responding to forces as they come—erosion, weather, tectonic pressure—without anxiety about what might happen next. There's a kind of wisdom in that, though I'm careful not to romanticize it too much. Mountains aren't conscious. They don't choose their response to change.
But we do. And maybe that's the point.
I've stopped trying to predict the future in any detailed way. Not because prediction is useless—it's not—but because I've learned to hold my predictions lightly. The future I imagine is a tool for thinking, not a destination I'll actually reach. The real future will surprise me, probably in ways I can't currently imagine, and definitely in ways that will make my current certainties look naive.
The Practice of Uncertainty
Living without certainty doesn't mean living without purpose or direction. It means something subtly different: building with the knowledge that your building might need to adapt, that your plans might need to change, that the future might demand something entirely different from what you prepared for.
The alpine villages figured this out centuries ago. They built with stone—local stone from the mountains themselves—not because they were trying to match the mountains' permanence, but because they understood impermanence. Stone buildings can be adapted, repaired, rebuilt. They last not because they're unchanging, but because they can change while remaining fundamentally themselves.
The old farmhouses in the Gosau valley have stood for 300 years. But they've been modified constantly—new windows, updated roofs, modern plumbing, electricity, internet. They persist not through resistance to change, but through adaptation to it. They're permanent and impermanent at once, like the mountains themselves, which seem unchanging but are actually in constant, slow transformation.
What the Mountains Know About Tomorrow
The Dachstein glacier is melting. This is measurable, documented, undeniable. The ice that has crowned this mountain for at least 6,000 years is disappearing, and within my lifetime, it might be gone entirely. Even the seemingly permanent proves temporary on the right timescale.
But the mountain itself? It'll be fine.
It's survived warmer periods before. During the Medieval Warm Period, these mountains were ice-free and farmers grew crops at altitudes that are now permanent snowfields. During the Little Ice Age, glaciers advanced far beyond their current extent, grinding down valleys and reshaping the terrain. The mountain witnessed all of it with geological indifference.
What does this mean for us, for our future, for the predictions we make with such confidence?
Maybe it means we should hold our certainties more loosely. Not abandon them—we need frameworks for thinking about tomorrow, we need plans and preparations and predictions. But we should remember that we're making educated guesses, not discovering inevitable truths. The future is genuinely uncertain, genuinely unknowable in its details, genuinely capable of surprising us.
And that's okay. Maybe it's even good.
The Comfort of Stone
There's something oddly comforting about standing at the base of a mountain that's been here for 200 million years and will be here for 200 million more (barring truly catastrophic geological events). It puts your worries in perspective. Not in a way that makes them meaningless—your life matters, your concerns are real, your future is important. But in a way that reminds you that uncertainty is the natural state of things, that permanence is rarer than we think, and that the things we're most certain about are often the things we're most wrong about.
The Romans who mined salt in these mountains were certain their empire would last forever. The medieval miners who carved deeper tunnels were certain their trade would sustain their descendants for generations. The Habsburg officials who administered this region were certain their empire was the natural order of things. They were all wrong, and the mountains didn't care.
But here's the thing: they lived good lives anyway. They built communities, raised families, created art and music and traditions that still echo through these valleys. Their certainties were wrong, but their lives had meaning regardless. The future they imagined wasn't the future they got, but they lived well in the present they had.
Tomorrow, Unwritten
I don't know what the future holds. Not really. I can make educated guesses—climate change will continue, technology will advance, societies will adapt or fail to adapt, the mountains will weather and erode at their geological pace. But the details? The things that will actually matter? The events that will reshape how we live and think and organize ourselves? I'm probably as wrong about those as the Romans were about their eternal empire.
And I'm learning to be okay with that.
The mountains teach patience with uncertainty. They've seen enough futures to know that prediction is hubris. They've witnessed enough certainties crumble to know that flexibility matters more than rigidity. They've stood through enough change to know that permanence and impermanence aren't opposites but partners in an ancient dance.
So when I think about the future now, I think about it differently. Not as something to predict and control, but as something to prepare for with humility. Not as a destination to reach, but as a process to engage with. Not as a problem to solve, but as a reality to inhabit with grace and adaptability.
The peaks will outlast our predictions. They always have. They always will. And maybe that's exactly what we need to remember as we face an uncertain tomorrow—that uncertainty is normal, that permanence is rare, and that the best way to meet the future is not with rigid plans but with flexible wisdom.
The next time you're worried about the future—yours, ours, the world's—try standing at the base of a mountain. Any mountain will do, though the limestone giants of the Salzkammergut are particularly good at this. Look up at rock that's been there longer than your species has existed. Think about all the futures it's witnessed, all the certainties it's seen crumble, all the predictions that proved wrong while it simply continued being stone.
Then go live your life. Make your plans, but hold them lightly. Prepare for tomorrow, but don't pretend you know what it will bring. Build with stone if you can—not to match the mountains' permanence, but to create something that can adapt while remaining fundamentally itself.
The future will surprise you. The mountains won't.
And somehow, in that contrast between the predictable permanence of stone and the unpredictable flow of human events, there's a kind of wisdom worth learning. Not the wisdom of certainty, but the wisdom of acceptance. Not the comfort of knowing what comes next, but the freedom of embracing the unknown.
These peaks will outlast our predictions. They'll outlast our certainties, our empires, our technologies, our fears and hopes and carefully constructed plans. They'll be here long after we're gone, witnessing futures we can't imagine, standing silent through changes we can't predict.
And maybe that's the most honest thing anyone can say about tomorrow: we don't know, the mountains don't care, and life goes on regardless.