Although I had seen hundreds of pictures of Alaska and its grandeur, nothing could prepare me for what I was about to experience. When people ask me about it, I am left relatively speechless. We overuse words in the English language so there are no words left to describe extreme experiences and emotions like this was for me. The first one that comes to mind is awesome but that doesn't work anymore. I like to say that I was awestruck. That helps to explain my silence. It was amazing, unbelievable, and any other extreme adjective that comes to mind. I knew that I would cry when I actually saw the glacier because I have always been teary just watching them break away and splash into the ocean on a monitor of any sort. That was about the melting, the loss, the irretrievability and finality of it. But that wasn't it when I actually saw and heard it. It was just so beautiful. I have never cried at seeing natural beauty before. This was a first. I was struck by thinking about those rocks and frozen water that had literally been carried through eons of time and here they were being dropped at our feet to do with as we would. It is such an awesome responsibility. (There's that word again.) Everything was much more intense than I expected. The blue of the sky and the sun glistening on icebergs floating by. The sight of splashing chunks being sheared off and the slight delay before hearing the splash followed by the oohs and ahhs of the humans witnessing the new water being born. Seeing a fishing boat float by and seeing how small we all are in comparison to the massiveness of glaciers and mountains and oceans. Being amazed at the wonder of nature when we allow it to work its magic - snow, rain, ice, water - and how we humans have the power to mess it up so easily even when we have no intention to do so. After all, what was the increase in my annual carbon footprint as I floated by on this 9 story hotel just so I could witness Mother Nature in action? This glacier was what the trip to Alaska was all about for me. The rest were all extras. And there were a lot of extras. The Float Plane tour over the glaciers around Juneau gave me the aerial perspective which is completely different. There were jagged peaks and crevasses that literally scared me and a blue so blue that I felt like I had never seen blue before. I saw whales and dolphins and eagles and never lost the amazement of it. There is absolutely nothing like witnessing animals in their own environment. I loved the smallness of the towns in Alaska and the awareness that there is no choice given the terrain. You can't really grow a city when surrounded by mountains on 3 sides and the ocean on the other. I had the feeling that this will always be as it is today and the ruggedness of it is the gift that will keep it so. I know in my head that we humans will find a way to destroy it because we have dynamite and other explosive tools at our disposal but I hope that we won't feel the need for that for many generations to come. I want my children and my grandchild to look at a piece of our world that has been unspoiled and to know that once long, long ago, it was all this beautiful.
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