Face to Face

It is ever popular recently not just to speak of global warming and the environment but to also change your ways to help turn back the climate clock--going green, reducing our footprint. So we remember to shut off the lights, unplug the coffee, buy local produce, recycle, walk to work, all in an effort to keep the world's glaciers from receding to a state of nonexistence. These simple acts, if done en masse, could very well affect change, but this whole concept of glacial recession may be too abstract to truly inspire action. Having stood face to face with many glaciers in one week--Rob Roy, Fox & Franz Josef--I can say that it is way more motivating than any documentary.

As you drive up the road to view the glaciers, signs are posted as far as one kilometer out to show where the glacier reached in the 17 and 1800s. The glaciers themselves are beautiful, milky white turquoise ice, sculpted in jagged peaks, both reflecting and shaping the rocks that the ice once covered. But the glaciers have receded, and substantially--the glacial rivers are all rock bed and the ice changes everyday.Standing at the foot of these glaciers really inspires the feeling of witnessing a natural phenomenon, one that may sooner be history than present.