Lake Matheson and Franz Josef Glacier

Anne and I headed out early from Fox Glacier on her last day here with me. We had a nice breakfast of muesli and fresh fruit and then headed on to walk around Lake Matheson, the lake with those beautiful reflections of Aoraki/Mt. Cook and Mt. Tasman. That was a nice, peaceful walk, obviously with beautiful views.

From there, we headed up to Franz Josef Glacier, and figured we’d stop and hike in to see the terminal face, which is as far as you can go without an alpine guide. Just as on Fox Glacier, I was completely overwhelmed by its mass and presence. I couldn’t stop taking it in. Right at the face, that is all you can see: the craggy, muddy wall of ice blocks, towering above you. There is such power in that immense wall of ice, completely occupying your entire vision and focus. As you walk away from the face, you begin to see the upper reaches of the glacier: blue ice, sometimes with the sun playing across and lighting it up. When the clouds lift further, the white snow at the top comes into view, layered with the browny-grey craggy mountaintops and the blue sky. The snow is an astonishingly pure white and is set off so well by those other elements that it seems all the purer in contrast. The textures and colors surrounding that lofty glacial snow field compliment each other, setting off each of the visual elements of sky, snow and mountains to their best effect.

I slowly kept going, walking away from the glacier, stopping constantly for “one last look” over my shoulder. On my own now, since Anne had walked back more quickly to go to the bathroom, I stopped at a creek coming down from one of the many high waterfalls cascading over the smooth rocky schist faces of the valley. This waterfall started as one flow at the top of the cliff, fanned out over a rock, collected again into a single stream and then divided into two streams crashing down to the bottom of the cliff face. From there, the water joined back together and continued as a creek, which came down and ran under a little bridge on the trail. I walked down beside the creek and stood there, hands pressed together in prayer position, full of gratitude and awe, looking up at the mountains, covered in rainforest vegetation and capped by a layer of clouds, then down at the cool, clear creek below me and then back up at the amazing, smooth rock faces of the mountainsides directly before me. Broken and weathered, textured with so many layers, all interlinked and commingling as they can only in metamorphic rocks. I felt myself, my spirit, interwoven into those rocks and this stream, this place. I felt a part of this environment, these glaciers that I find so magical.