Glimpse

Glimpse

 

My feet.

My car.

Southwest Airlines.

Seattle Airport shuttle with a Russian driver.

MS Oosterdam.

Juneau rental van.

A glimpse through the spruce.

My feet, and then:

big, white, and blue.

A blue like no other.

Mendenhall.

Renamed in honor of the Geodetic Survey bureaucrat.

Muir originally named it “Auke” after the Tlingit Indian clan.

Glacier doesn’t know its name.

It has no need for a name.

Glacier is bigger than that.

It just is.

Big.

Its desire beyond beautiful.

Powerful.

A weapon of mass destruction for which there are no treaties.

I come and go and take away digits and a feeling of respect and appreciation.

It remains.

One.

Big, powerful.

Forever moving.

Mendenhall Glacier.

 

 

Juneau, Alaska

July 2008