Glacier :: Nature Wildlife Geography Essays

Glacier The glacial run off river was colder than ice, so cold it was like a torrent of broken glass against the skin. The water itself is bluish white, the color of skim milk. On the bank of the glacial river, a hundred dead and rotting fish lay scattered around like casualties of a recent battle. The corpses lay in every stage of decay, from fresh, as if just pulled from the water, to pure white skeletons stripped by scavengers. The stench is like an enormous natural gas leak. The river itself is so crowded with spawning silver salmon, that it resembles a giant can of sardines. The sunlight shining off their silver backs gleams like polished chrome. These amazing fish are swimming upstream against the current, jumping often with the power and agility of an Olympic gymnast. The terrain surrounding the river is frozen tundra. It has slimy green and brown muck on top due to the unusually warm summer, but dig down an inch and you will encounter ground as hard as concrete. The vast tundra is in sharp contrast to the rolling hills far in the distance. The retreating glacier literally cut its path through the landscape, voiding this stretch of land of everything but hard ground and arctic grass. Thousands of years of glacial movement had cut a distinct scar that could read history as well as any sedimentary rock. In the distance you could clearly see the boundaries of the ancient glacier. Hills suddenly appear out of the frozen wasteland. Tall evergreens jutting into the sky, look like giants, even at a distance, compared to the flatness of the tundra. Thick grey clouds hang ominously over head, as if further threatening any one who might dare this rugged country. The mountains far away have rings around them like halos, and one can see that they are emptying their heavy burden upon the green mountain slopes. When looking up the river, you can follow it west and trace it to its source. There, stands a magnificent mountain of ice, known as portage glacier. The glacier strongly resembles a real mountain, one that has endured a blizzard of phenomenal proportion. Instead of being a brown dirt slope with patches of white snow and ice, it is the opposite. A perfectly white slope pocked with patches of brown. The end of the glacier, which is about as far away as the eye can see, is pressed against the ground, like an unstoppable force working against an unmovable object.