Let's talk about the latest news in glaciers around the world, calling them by their names and learning where they are at on the continuum between ablation - melting - or accumulation - growing.
Glaciers’ furrowed plow marks extend across lands they have not yet departed. These remnants of the last Ice Age aren’t fossils, and they are not extinct. Glacier’s breath exudes life in the snow melt filling rivers and lakes. Their melting mowed and contoured the landscape, knocked mountains over or squeezed them up, flattened surfaces, forced gorges and fjords. We drink their fresh water. Their sediment carries on winds to fertilize fields. Name an Alaska place magnificent in its rimmed landscape guarding a body of water, such as Turnagain Arm, Kachemak Bay or Prince William Sound and you might want to know the names of the glaciers nearby that over time shaped them. A name is just the beginning to becoming more intimate with these neighbors living and breathing, and yes dying, among us.
Naturalist and Alaska glacier pioneer John Muir believed the great creator cast an eye on the possibilities: “The master builder chose for a tool not the earthquake nor lightning to rend and split asunder, not the stormy torrent,” but glaciers.
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Thank you for a great read! I'm interested in the many aspects of a glacier's life. Could you write more about the life cycle of glaciers?