As we've traveled through Canada and Alaska, we've seen so many glaciers and evidence of glaciers past. Some have been advancing and others retreating. We see them around every other corner. Some glaciers are relatively short and others wind for miles toward the mountain flanks of their birth. We have seen miles of U-shaped glacial valleys, hanging valleys, mountains of moraine gravel, and rushing rivers that are laden with glacial silt. We feel miniscule in their presence.
Mother Nature does things on such a grand
scale. Earth's huge plates constantly move crushing together to form mountain ranges or volcanoes. Sometimes those plates flip all the way over. We were wondering what that would show on the Richter Scale? Whole continents were covered with ice at times. Did you know that Olympia used to have a glacier over a mile high sitting on it?
Other eras on Earth had most of North America covered with ocean. The deposition
layers of the Grand Canyon of Arizona and the Bad Lands of South Dakota attest to that. As we've driven through Canada and Alaska, there have been some exposed layers that look so similar to the Badlands through which we traveled last summer. In the next millenia will there be people who travel through the badlands of Alaska?
We marvel at this amazing planet Earth and we are grateful that we can explore portions of it. We cannot control Mother Nature, but we can learn about and appreciate her gifts.
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