Terrestrial Ice, Climate, Alaskan Indigenous Cultures

Glaciers are close to home. My life has revolved around the terrestrial ice retreating in northern Southeast Alaska -- first in Juneau, where I grew up; then in Glacier Bay, where I've spent my adult life. I've been a NPS Naturalist Ranger aboard ships and on shore at Glacier Bay for 6 seasons, and a bookseller for Alaska Natural History Association for 3 seasons; I've hiked upper Muir Inlet in the mid-70's and seen Muir retreat onto land in my own time; then watched over 30+ years as the alder stages have succeeded the rock scraped by the glaciers, leaving no hiking and few beaches with which to share with the bears who must also shift to traveling accessible land. I've spent a day with Bruce Molnia coming down Bay, showing us his computer ideas for showing the rephotographic aspects of the retreating glaciers; and most strikingly, I've watched hard ice glaciers morph into soft, punky entities ravaged by inner waterfall "portals", leaving black rock moraine beaches. Each trip up Bay is now another revelation in drastic constant change.

I live in Tlingit homeland, on earth that has only rebounded out of the sea since the last vestige of the Little Ice Age retreated from Glacier Bay, leaving massive outwash fans full of meandering rivers and deposits of silt, sand, and rock. All of this has risen some three feet in 30 years.

In Gustavus, we are new on the land, thus stewards. We have a responsibility to the changes the earth is going through -- global warming; changes in temperature, precipitation, weather events, and land features due to melting and retreating glacial ice, not to mention the land rebounding.

How important is water on the earth? How about snow flakes and ice crystals? Looking at analogies which consider 1,000 drops of water represent all of the water on Earth and seeing how those drops are distributed in oceans, inland seas, glaciers, ground water and soil moisture, the atmosphere, lakes and rivers, and in all living plants and animals; Looking at 1000 snow flakes and 1000 ice crystals represent all of the snow and glacier ice on Earth and seeing where those thousand are physically geographically distributed across the earth -- what a wakeup to the importance of water, snow, and ice in our lives.

The Ross Ice Shelf of Antarctica which stood for over 12,000 years collapsed in just five weeks. Greenland's Jakobshaven Glacier has been moving 113 feet per day for the last five years. The Grand Pacific Glacier of Glacier Bay, Alaska has retreated over 65 miles in just 250 years, one of the fastest retreats in recorded history.

And what about oral history? For Glacier Bay is the land of the Tlingits, where stories are owned and legends are carefully protected. Geography is named and cherished, protected (included in a National Park) while taken from local tribes -- the Chookenaidi, the Dak'dein'tan, the Kogwantan, and others. Place is important, crucial, demands respect and recognition.

Gustavus writers have spoken of the geography of ice land:

Geography
by Judith Aftergut, from The Finest Musician, c1982, illustrated by Kate Boesser

I have heard it said
the Tlingit people believe
everything is alive
and carve in wood an eagle's nest
with eyes.
Land is a bowl for the sea.

Dream that hair is like seaweed,
yet, sailor, take care in drifting.
Starfish eat urchins.
We dye our lives.
In the clear morning light
each wide ripple opens eyes
like a knot in wood, a Tlingit carving.
We are the sea and her islands,
wearing necklaces of stone.

Glacier and Woman
by Judith Aftergut

This land has sacrificed, gouged deep,
bared to gravel
where hemlock grew.
Dryas will come again, old woman.
This is all that you can do.
Remember childhood stories?
Men do not protect you.
Seeds were planted.
Young girls are mischievous.

Desire
by Judith Aftergut

If you are rock, I don't mind,
for I know that ice is harder.
I have seen boulders carried for miles,
and mountains ground to till
floating in streams of water
released after thousands of years.
I know that ice transforms
and rock
desires to be liquid.

(*See Notes, p.34-35 for explanation of some poems)

Listen to Tlingit elder Nora Dauenhauer, in the Droning Shaman:

Alux the Sea

Alux the swea,
a droning shaman,
puckers spraying lips
cleansing St. Paul
with mist.

Seal Pups

As if inside
a blue-green bottle
rolling with the breakers.


Seal Rookery

Under its brown fur
the beach twitches to life.


Kelp

Ribbons of iodine
unrolled by fingers
of waves.

Listening for Native Voices
(Native Writers' Workshop, Nome, Alaska)
--for Joy Harjo

Trapped voices,
frozen
under sea ice of English,
buckle,
surging to be heard.
We say
"Listen for sounds.
They are as important
as voices."
Listen.
Listen.
Listen.
Listen.

--April 14, 1984

From Glacier Bay Concerto by Richard Dauenhauer:

"Helping the Natives"

At 40 below
in proto-Athapaska
morphemes freeze.
And at 70 below
phonemes
turn to slush.
All summer, though,
we feel the golden sun
of eloquence.
But underlying patterns
are like permafrost:
and basic structures
never change.

*** *** ***

In a Glacier Bay Concerto:
ice moving
like the footsteps
of a thousand mourners,
a continuum
to kittywakes and terns.

*** *** ***

I will lift up my eyes

to the mountains
where my help
is from.
While sunlight sparkles
on summer water
and snow capped peaks
history is now
and Glacier Bay.

*** *** ***

Growing Old
Yet we perceive it
as loss of all
potential.
"Advancing age"
we call it.
as if it were a glacier.
Maturity
brings us ever closer
to the spirit world
until we blend with it,
become it.

· · If all of Alaska's glaciers melted, sea level would rise ~ 0.05 meters (about 0.16 feet).

· · If all of Earth's temperate glaciers melted, sea level would rise ~ 0.3 meters (about one foot).

· · If all of Greenland's glaciers melted, sea level would rise ~ 6 meters (about 19.7 feet).

· · If all of Antarctica's glaciers melted, sea level would rise ~ 73 meters (about 240 feet).

"It's like this: more thawing ... more decomposition ... more green house gases...more atmospheric heating ... more thawing ... more decomposition ... more greenhouse gases ... more atmospheric heating... " (Clay Good)

The arctic is fragile. Look at frozen ground data from frozen ground maps around the world.