Fox Glacier

First, I just have to say that I'm so excited because I finally figured out how to get space between paragraphs in my posts, so hopefully these will be easier for you to read now.

We arrived in Fox Glacier just as the sun disappeared behind the mountains rising up to the east. We checked into our hostel and immediately set off to do the Minnehaha Walk, just at the edge of town, before it got dark. We had a nice time walking through the rainforest. It was a short little path, which was perfect, because we were hungry and ready for dinner. I really wanted to do the Minnehaha Walk though, since, well, its the Minnehaha Walk! Of course I wanted to do it! Afterward, we headed back to the hostel for some gourmet travel dinner. Anne was in charge of the pasta with a mushroom and creme fraiche sauce with lots of onions and garlic. I worked on a salad and salad dressing. Yummy! We ate with a couple of the guys who were also skulking about the kitchen, and had a great time, chatting away and enjoying our dinner.

The next day, we headed off for the ice. We did the All Day Glacier Hike, which didn't start until 9:30am, leaving us a nice long time to sleep in and have a relaxed breakfast. Down at the Alpine Guides office, we were rounded up and given boots and lots of wool socks, plus all sorts of other warm and waterproof goodies to choose from. I had decided not to bring a raincoat because it didn't seem like it was going to rain, but they wanted all of us to have waterproofs, so I ended up dragging along one of their ginormous, heavy rain jackets. Good thing I've got the hip belt on my day pack. It helped distribute the weight a bit. It was actually the bulkiness that was more annoying though, because there's only so much room in my daypack. Once we got out on the ice, however, all of that was forgotten. It was spectacular!

The ice really was blue, a bright aqua color trading off with white for dominance. So many different shades of it! We saw some amazing ice caves and tunnels, which Nigel, our guide, told us don't form often down in the ice fall area we were hiking through. He said that most of the formations in this area are usually crevasses. The caves form further up on the Victoria Flats, where the heli-hikiers go. Heli-hiking is when you take a helicopter to the upper part of the glacier and hike around up there. Add at least a hundred dollars for any of those hikes! Caves form up there because it is sandwiched between two icefall areas where the glacier descends so steeply that the ice breaks off in big blocks of ice. The ice fall area above it is moving more rapidly than the one below it, which is the one that we're hiking on. This buckles the flat area in between. Parts of those buckled areas melt out, forming caves. The caves where we were hiking had formed by chance, when thinner areas melted out into a cave shape, an unusal occurance on this part of the ice.

Nigel also told us that only 200 years ago, the glacier filled up nearly the whole valley, to the tops of the cliff faces edging it. It receded for a while after that, then grew again until 1998, then receded again and for the past 15 months has been advancing again. I think I got all that right! I know the 15 months and about 200 years ago parts are correct. The rest I'm not so cetain about, but its close enough. I know I'm not totally off, so at least you get the picture of how this thing moves.

As we hiked, we saw many little holes in the ice, filled with water, and when you looked in, you could see the bright aqua of the ice intensified by the water covering it. I would have especially loved to stay and take in more of the cave walls, just being in them. They were astoundingly beautiful. There were individual crystals visible in the ice, in layers of different colors and crystal patterns, and the textures formed where these layers had melted at different rates, leaving the surface full of smooth, shiny ridges and lines just drew me in. Looking into them, marvelling at the beauty of the colors and the curved, concentric outlines, each slightly different from the ones around it, receding back into the depths of the ice pack. In the caves, you are surrounded by this beauty completely. Just think of me, already in love with baby blue, surrounded by the color in such a form! I was inspired! I drank some water dripping down the side of the walls. Pure glacial melt water, straight from the source.

Hiking around on the glacier was fabulous as well. We all got crampons and alpine walking sticks to help us navigate the ice. We strapped the crampons, a set of sharp spikes, onto the bottom of our boots. We also mastered the art of walking with our sticks, which had a metal spike in the bottom of each, to help them stick in the ice and thus aid us in keeping our balance. We tramped about in a line, stomping our feet to dig the crampons into the ice. There we so many little bits of beauty that we passed: the little stones in the streams across the ice; the blue, blue holes; the caves; a large boulder lying in the middle of the ice where it had been left by a previously melted ice block; the walls that our guides, Nigel and Steve, carved our way down with their ice axes; the amazing ice fields towering above us with some blocks of ice 4-5 stories tall; the rainforested mountainsides with waterfalls splashing down every way we looked...

This is one of only 3 glaciers in the world surrounded by temperate rain forest: Fox Glacier (where we were hiking), Franz Josef Glacier (25 kms down the road) and another down in South America (Argentina, I think). Whenever I needed to put all this ice in perspective, I looked down the valley to the richly vegetated green mountainsides, teeming with waterfalls, and I was put in awe! I have discovered so many people who are jaded and I feel so sorry for them, unable to appreciate all this amazing beauty. I overheard one guy on our hike giving his dismissive reaction to this awe-inspiring landscape, saying "eh, only so-so. I've seen better." But how can he say that?! He's never seen this unique place and time before and will never see it again. It is a special moment that will never be repeated. Its up to us to glean every bit of appreciation for every little aspect of our world that we can. I think life would be so horrible if I had such a jaded attitude. When you can't be impressed by things, no matter now small or how magnificent, when you lose your ability to wonder, what fun it is to live? What good are your experiences if you always think you've seen better?

The glacier was one of those things that if you stop to think about how truly massive and powerful it is, you feel completely overwhelmed and tiny. But at the same time, here we were playing around on it, poking into its cracks and crevices. Even we small things can be part of something so immense and seemingly timeless. It isn't really timeless, but when you look up at its giant proportions above you and surrounding you, you feel like it must be. How can something like this be ephemeral? But here it is, defying my placement of it in a category above reality, changing constantly and dramatically.

As we hiked up to the glacier, we saw the cave in the terminal face from which the Fox River flows. The guides pointed to another spot on the terminal face, a good ways down (200-500 meters? I've said before I can't judge distances on these things that are such an unimaginably large scale) where the river used to emerge until an ice fall a few weeks ago blocked its path. The water pressure quickly built up inside and worked its way through, until it finally broke through in another place, carving out a new cave, from which it flows now. I mean, if something as dramatic as a river's path can change in under a week? Wow. And its periods of receding and advancing are always changing. Then there are the ice falls and the way things melt: what patterns they form, where and how fast... all completely unpredictable. There are no patterns. It keeps you guessing.

I think its good to have things like that in our lives: immense, beautiful (breathtakingnly so), amazingly powerful and completely unpredictable. We need some uncertainty in the world. Experiencing something like this and realizing all the treats that its ever-changing existence can bring is essential to life. There are constantly new and evolving treats to be found in the natural world. And I feel so humble. I can create many beautiful things, but this is in a class by itself, one that can never be approached by human engineering. It is never the same and always has something wonderful for those of us who choose to go searching for it. Thank goodness for nature! I am so overwhelmed with gladness and blessing. I am so happy. I want to cry! We are SO LUCKY for everything we have in our lives. This amazing world we are a part of! I can't nearly describe how wonderful it is. That is wonderful in the sense of "full of wonder," as well as "fabulous." How can people not see this? Or do all people see it, but some see it so differently from me that I can't even recognize their genuine appreciation and wonder for the natural world and its intrinsic power and goodness?