The first surprise is that they're blue—startlingly blue. A
glacier in Alaska doesn't look anything like an ice cube in your freezer. That's
because the ice in tide-water glaciers is so densely packed that it
absorbs all visible light except the short, blue spectrum. There is some
white near the surface, where the ice traps air bubbles, and there are
patches of brown throughout from dirt and rocks and debris. It's all a
reminder of how, on its slow trek downhill, the mighty glacier's
movement scrapes up everything that lies in its path, including the
earth.
We all think we know what a glacier looks like—how many times have you watched
Titanic?
But seeing South Sawyer Glacier in person—in one of the last wild
places on the planet—is nothing like you expect. At first, the glacier
looks almost like a toy. As you head out on the
Disney Wonder
cruise ship, you pass sparkling blue bergs bobbing like ice cubes in a
punch bowl. On a few of them, you spot seals and eagles sunning
themselves lazily on their icy rafts. As you get closer, however, the
mood changes. You're confronted with what looks like a massive blue
river of ice pouring down the mountains. The individual pieces are
indeed pretty—you can see why the slang for a diamond is "ice"—but they
are also threatening, with their jagged peaks and sharp crevices.
Yet for all the visual drama, what's surprising about getting up
close and personal with a glacier is how it hits the other senses.
Listen carefully, and you'll hear low groaning and popping and maybe
even a distant roar that sounds like thunder. That's the sound of an
impossibly large force hauling its weight around the world. You can feel
a glacier, too, even when you're not touching it. Even in the middle of
the summer, you shiver in your hat and gloves, due not as much to the
cold as to the chilling realization that you're witnessing a kind of
raw, natural power that makes everything else feel insignificant.
At no time is that sense of helplessness greater than when a glacier
calves. Calving (a term that has nothing to do with cows but is related
to the word cave, as in cave in) happens when massive icebergs are set
loose from the motherland. You see it first: a spray, like a frozen mist
or fine sleet, shimmying through the air. Then comes the violent sound
of a hotel-size piece of ice falling into the water. If you're close
enough, the glacier says good-bye in ripples that rock your boat, as if
you'd strayed too close to a waterfall. You don't realize until
afterward that you were holding your breath. And then it really hits
you: The glacier is dying. Whether that's the result of global warming
or the natural ebb and flow of nature is a matter of debate. But there's
no question that what you've been witnessing is a piece of earth fading
away. Like Luca Brasi in
The Godfather, a part of South Sawyer Glacier has just gone to sleep with the fishes.
Join a
Kosherica cruise to Alaska while you can still witness the stunning beauty of glaciers.