GPS Coordinates: 61.315538, -148.512824
We’re 40 miles from Anchorage as the crow flies over the Chugach Mountains and in a bowl just past the front of the range. The dry lake-bed has tire tracks in it. It’s an improbable straightaway speed track. No car tracks though. No four-wheelers either. Parked at the upwind end are two small airplanes. Taildraggers.
We didn’t get here flying over the range. We took the low route hugging the foothills to Palmer then hanging a right along the Knick into the valley. Below us, the braided river twists and trails over silted sand. Willows poke up on the high drifts. There’s a dotted-line moose track and stripes of 4-wheeler trails. A dirt lane runs on the narrow bench above the river where scattered cabins poke out of the thin woods. The Knik Glacier is a wall of ice ahead and below; two miles wide and 80 feet tall rising out of a rushing dirty river.
The glacier isn’t crackling white at this time of year. By August the winter’s snow has melted away and the river of ice reveals itself and its history. Fractured into tall towers, streaked with dark veins of gravel and dust. And deep in the crevasses that rich blue aura you only see in the depths of old, old ice, compressed across centuries. The glowing cold soul of glaciers.
We hang another right and drop low over the river cut between the ice and the mountain. It’s a canyon. The river has narrowed to six lanes wide, clogged with mid-morning traffic: car and bus-sized chunks of ice. We’re flying at 5 stories up between solid walls at 100 miles per hour. Brown water, blue ice, gray rock, green trees and above our heads dots of white. Dall sheep grazing the upper slopes, looking down at our little yellow plane cruising by.
We decided to camp there before we hiked the half-mile up to the top of the old lake bed. And even after it was another half-mile before we found a flat spot large enough to pitch our tent, we still decided to stay. We made two trips for tent, kitchen, sleeping gear, clothes, food. Back and forth, up and down the big berm, picking our way over rocks around the brush and blooming lupins, little Rachel in the backpack singing a happy-to-be-outside tune the whole time. And we were happy too. Life is better when we’re living outside.
We hauled water up from the lake for tea. It was cloudy with glacial dust. We let it settle in the bucket while we set up camp. We made tea, thought about dinner and watched the icebergs in the lake slowly, so slowly wandering with the breeze.
Tucked among the brush above the shoreline we found an old green canoe. Two paddles, two life vests, a bail bucket - we were in business. We took Rachel for her first canoe ride paddling around small dying icebergs. With a poke of the paddle the littlest ones popped into shards that clinked and tinkled as they floated apart. A barn-sized hunk of rotted ice tipped and rolled sending out waves as it settled into its new repose. Rearranging the other ice in its orbit and bobbing us along towards shore.
That night the stars came out. And I don’t know if you’ve seen stars from the backcountry where there are no lights from the earth within your view to dim the depths of the heavens. In the backcountry, the night sky is three-dimensional. Along the great milky way our galaxy reaches out into the depths of space. Stars and planets show their faint colors and twinkle, waving hello. Under it all, now and then, a big bright tin can full of people-stuff flies by - sattelites looking at us looking at them.
That night, under the stars, hanging glaciers growled from the ridgeline. Across the lake the Colony Glacier creaked and boomed. And the wolves cried out to each other in song. One wolf calling from the south, answering calls from the north. Rolling around the bowl of the lake in long low harmony.
