Cross Country #33 The Ice Land Cometh

Goldie: Look straight ahead! Through the helicopter window...that forbidding, impossibly blue-white, craggy wall, lined with rocks, silt and dirt churned into patterns like a madman's chocolate swirl cake, that is the birth place of icebergs,
the end of a glacier.

Yesterday, we stood atop Glacier Thiel, did my son Mark and I. We were waiting for the return trip helicopter that was overdue, shivering as the evening winds blew hot then cool across the layers of clothes drenched from our upward climb.
We contemplated putting our spiked crampons back onto the fiberglass boots they had supplied us. ("Mom, crampons?! I thought they were called.....". Mark! Never mind.) Perhaps we should be opening the emergency bag and assembling the
never-yet-seen tent. I shuddered in embarrassment at thought of the minyan by now surely gathered for a randomly set Kabbalat Shabbat. "Where is that woman rabbi they listed in the bulletin?" some probably were saying. I knew in my heart someone would step forward to at least light candles and say ha motzi over the challah.

Beneath us the living process of the planet could be felt, seen, heard, explored. A hundred cubic feet of snow compact down to form one foot of glacial ice, so solid that it is technically classed as a mineral. This is not regular refrigerator ice. It is a liquid
mineral....try to imagine it....a glowing crystalline concoction perfused with the happy light blue hue of a bunny's blanket in a children's book.

"Is the human concept for plumbing systems based on this?" Mark asks, watching rivulets of melt find tiny crevices caused by the wind patterns. Crevices become channels, then tunnels roaring deep within the glacier....emerging as
powerful plumes of water and silt, pouring through creaking cracks into the bay. We fill our water bottles and drink gleefully (at least we won't die of thirst up here.) It is all moving, churning, plates of ice and rock and silt, a liquid sculpture machine, moving downward a few dozen feet per century. The wind causes 70% of the melting, our glaciogist guide informs us. Global warming? Not the primary cause, research shows this pattern started 150 to 250 years before the industrial era.

Every well-honed instinct we learned as down hill skiers proves counter-productive for descending a glacier. No edging of boot against hillside helps..... fierce flat-footed stomping is called for, our "ice axe" becomes a staff maintained for
balance in the uphill hand. I see the guide bite her lip as Mark leaps from mogul to mogul....they warn us not to fall lest we slide with no coefficient of friction great enough to stop potentially miles of descent. She sees he is sure footed and her glance moves to the courageous senior in our group, bizarrely enough...me.

I lean over the edge of a deep sink hole, only to find myself hoisted aloft from behind by the belt of the harness threaded between my legs, "straddle it, if you want to experience it" intones my guide. Sounds good to me.

"When will it wipe us out?" Mark asks, eyes huge as we clamber up to a perfect hundred foot high ice arch beside a lake upon the glacier. We are all surprised to be surprised by the obvious answer, "Humans survive the ice ages...remember, we were here before most of them, the last being some 3000 years ago....ice only covers part of the earth and even then we put on our furs and walked across with the wooly mammoths just ahead of us.

The helicopter came, we were two hours late getting back for Shabbat. No one had lit candles or made ha motzi...though the cruise director said a few dozen people had shown up.

Barry: Embarrassing too for your's truly, since I had to tell them the rabbi was out helicoptering.

Glacial ice is under so much pressure that it has a different structure to regular ice - hence the blueness. And there is life on and in, glaciers. Small worms  that live off algae! Glaciers move and carve away the mountains. Easily seen when traveling up
the fjords by boat. As a glacier recedes, plant life appears eventually ending in mature forest about 300 years later.
I am still trying to figure out what this is all about. I think it's a case of being exposed to waterfalls, volcanos, earthquakes, glaciers - all present in Alaska. Forces at work that we can actually see changing the landscape. Violence is integral
to all of these. And mystery.

Goldie: Mark's friends have adopted me, they're so bored with two days at sea that they came over and asked me to explain Judaism. Now, that's boredom.

Kid One: "I'm half Jewish, half Catholic. Can't really tell the difference, except I think Jews don't accept Jesus.
Kid Two: "I don't believe people should say they're two things at once. You can't really do anything that way, you end up being nothing. I'm Christian."
Kid Three: "We're all Jewish and I don't know anything about it. That's doing nothing too."
Kid Four (my son Mark): "Well I'm all Jewish and I know everything about it and I don't want to hear about it all over again, let's just play Monopoly."

Went down to visit my beloved in the cabin. He was sprawled out, feverish and feeling near death in the cabin. He warns me that if I touch him, we'll be playing  Necropoly. Here I am writing to you all, which at the moment is my own monopoly.
Barry's thinking a lot about death these days, since he has a cold. Doctors! . Now he's going on about the cemetery thing again. He has some new idea, a really grave undertaking. Can't tell you what it is, because it's like the invention of the Big
MacPlotz. And it's a plot you'll want to follow. Meanwhile, if he doesn't go back to the cabin and get some rest, he's
gonna become DeadDoc.com. 

Barry: Article in USA Today - "Going to Alaska. Pack flu medication."