THROUGH THE MUSCADINE continued
Katherine Smith, a local from Pinebluff, is
an Alaskan greenhorn and accidental poet.
She’s currently working in Chugach National
Forest, living to make life that is art.
THROUGH THE MUSCADINE continued
On Thin Ice
by Katherine Smith
From hollows between hills, they run.
Shaped like a storming ocean, a blue mudslide,
a barreled chest, glaciers contour Alaska. We fate
each other. Where they’ve been carves where
we are, and where they’re going beckons our
direction.
Amid the perennial white ice and snow, a
glacier’s first provocation is aquamarine. The
air bubbles that cause ice to appear white are
squeezed out of the densely compacted glacial
ice. The electric blue of a glacier appears so, just
as in bodies of water, because it is the color least
efficiently absorbed by water molecules.
Glaciers usually form in valleys such as a
geological amphitheater called a cirque. Snow
and ice accumulate faster than they ablate
(melt, evaporate, sublimate, calve, or erode).
As more snow falls into the depression, it
squeezes out the air from snow beneath and
compacts. Eventually, the compacted ice fills the
depression and overflows, sliding down under
its own weight. Literally a river of ice, glaciers
are constantly, slowly moving. Place your ear to
a crevasse, and you can hear it, humming and
cracking, the song of the earth’s belly.
Often, glaciers are born of ice sheets, ice
caps, and icefields. Ice sheets are larger than
19,000 square miles; the only remaining two
covering most of Antarctica and Greenland. Ice
caps are smaller than 19,000 square miles, and
icefields are usually smaller still, formed by the
underlying topography.
Atop the Harding Icefield in Seward, Alaska,
mile high mountaintops poke like rocky islands
through the ice as it thins. Exit Glacier spills out
like a scalloped tongue, leaving behind a braided
creek. It has retreated about a mile in the last
century.
While glaciers fluctuate through stages of
advancement and retreat, the current warming
and ablating of glaciers is unparalleled in
recorded history. Scientists testing the ice core
temperatures of Mount Hunter found that
Alaska summers are between 2.2 to 3.6 degrees
warmer than they were during the 18th, 19th
and early 20th centuries.
THROUGH THE MUSCADINE con't. next column THROUGH THE MUSCADINE con't. next column
Mon - Fri
8:30 - 5:00
Rodney Tyner with his son Jack enjoy golf
together at Knollwood Fairways.
How often do you visit Knollwood?
I come quite often; I’ve been coming
for many years. Now it’s Jack’s turn to start
coming. This is his first visit—his first attempt
at putting the ball in the hole!
How old is Jack? Three.
Does he want to come back? Oh yeah! He’s
been asking to come ever since he noticed
golf being played.
Favorite golfer? Ricky Fowler.
Sometimes the biggest problem is in
your head. You’ve Got to believe.
~Jack Nicklaus
Established on Midland Road, Knollwood
Fairways and Midland Country Club welcome
all to the center of golf in the Sandhills.
Whether you have 15 minutes for a quick
putt between appointments or some time for
a round of 9 holes, you are invited to spend
the day at Knollwood. Supplying what golfers
need in all capacities from the clubs, to the
balls, to a place to practice—Knollwood offers
all that and more! For the rest of the story, see
Front Page cover story.
On the day of my visit Melissa Greene
was working with Charles Johnson. I take a
moment to ask:
How have you benefited from taking golf
lessons with Melissa Greene? She’s improved
my putting and my short game. Currently I’m
working on my full swing.
What once happened in geologic time
now happens in a human lifetime. The Bering
Glacier, one of Alaska’s largest, has retreated 7.5
miles in the last century. Columbia Glacier in
Prince William Sound annually loses a mass of
over 3 billion tons and has retreated more than
12 miles since 1980.
In all, Alaska’s melting glaciers are losing 75
billion tons of ice a year. If that ice melts, a foot
of water would flood the state every seven years.
The largest reservoir of fresh water on earth
is glacial ice, and without it, sea levels would
rise over 230 feet. According to the Intergovernal
Panel on Climate Change, sea levels are
expected to rise between 4 and 35 inches by the
end of the century. For every inch, sandy beach
shorelines are expected to erode eight feet, says
Bruce Douglas, a coastal researcher at Florida
International University. This is a problem
for the more than a hundred million people
worldwide who live within three feet of mean
sea level.
As I ride the train to work with my Forest
Service trail crew, an interpreter recites that
when these railroad tracks were built in 1909,
they butted up against the ice of Spencer
Glacier. And each week, when all the tourists
crane their necks to glimpse the ultramarine
spill of retreating glacier on the far side of the
lake it created, I look away.
After unloading our gear at the Grandview
Whistle Stop and setting up camp, we hike the
mile and a half of trail that we’ve built to overlook
Bartlett Glacier. This year, we’re scratching in
a primitive trail to the glacier’s toe. It looks
farther away than it did the last two summers.
Deadman, a high hanging glacier, thunders as
it calves a boulder of ice. A chill runs through
me as I wonder if my children will ever see the
grandfathers of this valley, or just the hollows
left in a world of their absence.
No. 130 The Pinehurst Gazette, Inc. p.33