Glacial Longings

"On the morning of our arrival, I run up to the bridge to watch Thwaites come into view. Out in the gathering light its gray margin wobbles in the gloaming. No one knows quite what to say. The words I conjurecirque, serac, cleft, torque, ski slope, rampartall slide off the surface of the ice, plopping one after the other into the bay right in front of Thwaites; a bay that had up until just a few weeks prior to our arrival been perennially covered in ice. I hadnt imagined how profoundly apart this place would feelhow it would appear gigantic and fully formed, an entity all its own, well beyond the limits of human understanding and resistant to whatever language I might try to pin on it. I try out different words for whiteplaster of Paris, opalescent, pearland bluecobalt, cadmium, torqued turquoisebut none get at the way these colors come together to form a symphony of sorts, a polyphony of light and play, impossible to translate. Afterall, this floating ice shelf is comprised of snow that dropped before the rise and fall of Rome, before Jesus or the Buddha were born, before the invention of the alphabet. Before sound became symbol." Writer Elizabeth Rush shrouds the senses with her account of the first shipbound expedition to the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica.

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