Sea Bird in Glacier Bay
For those of us fortunate enough to travel the entire 65 mile length of Glacier Bay National Park, the magnificent scenery and remarkable wildlife invoke the almost tangible spirits of the illustrious explorers and scientists who are part of the history of this amazing place. The Tlingits probably occupied the Bay for thousands of years, but sometime between 1300 and 1750 AD they were driven out by a rapidly advancing glacier. When George Vancouver arrived in 1794, he described the mouth of the Bay as "a compact sheet of ice as far as the eye could discern". Shortly thereafter, a rapid retreat of the glacial ice began. During John Muir's first visit in 1879, he recorded a retreat of 48 miles. By 1916, William Cooper found more than 65 miles of open water. In a series of expeditions from 1921 to 1966, Cooper documented the remarkable plant succession that we too could observe as we traveled down Glacier Bay from the Margerie Glacier to Bartlett Cove. What we discovered on our journey today is that there is no such thing as "terra firma". This is exemplified by our picture of the day that shows the rocks of Gloomy Knob that originated on the sea floor near the equator 350 million years ago. In fact, SE Alaska consists of several blocks of rock called terranes that are imports from many different parts of the earth.
So we know that the earth is constantly changing. Some of these changes occur over millions of years; but there can be no doubt that big changes can happen in a human lifetime. In Glacier Bay, Mother Nature is sending us a message that we need to hear and clearly comprehend.
For those of us fortunate enough to travel the entire 65 mile length of Glacier Bay National Park, the magnificent scenery and remarkable wildlife invoke the almost tangible spirits of the illustrious explorers and scientists who are part of the history of this amazing place. The Tlingits probably occupied the Bay for thousands of years, but sometime between 1300 and 1750 AD they were driven out by a rapidly advancing glacier. When George Vancouver arrived in 1794, he described the mouth of the Bay as "a compact sheet of ice as far as the eye could discern". Shortly thereafter, a rapid retreat of the glacial ice began. During John Muir's first visit in 1879, he recorded a retreat of 48 miles. By 1916, William Cooper found more than 65 miles of open water. In a series of expeditions from 1921 to 1966, Cooper documented the remarkable plant succession that we too could observe as we traveled down Glacier Bay from the Margerie Glacier to Bartlett Cove. What we discovered on our journey today is that there is no such thing as "terra firma". This is exemplified by our picture of the day that shows the rocks of Gloomy Knob that originated on the sea floor near the equator 350 million years ago. In fact, SE Alaska consists of several blocks of rock called terranes that are imports from many different parts of the earth.
So we know that the earth is constantly changing. Some of these changes occur over millions of years; but there can be no doubt that big changes can happen in a human lifetime. In Glacier Bay, Mother Nature is sending us a message that we need to hear and clearly comprehend.
