Glacier Bay
A thousand or more years ago, when the Tlingit people came to South-eastern Alaska, the land they found was 'basking' in a relatively warm time of the current 'Interglacial' period. They found Glacier Bay to be a pleasant place to settle; there must have been salmon running in the streams, and plenty of wildlife and seafood on and beyond the shores. What the sea didn't provide, the land did, and trade via the passes over the coastal mountain range provided such luxuries as dall sheep horn and lichen dyes, in exchange for fish oil and shells. It is impossible to say how these people saw their own land, but I believe they saw it as most people see their land: primarily as a place to live in, and to use, but also as a place to love and revere. But during the 14th to 17th Centuries, the same 'Little Ice Age' that caused crop failures and starvation in northern Europe, and stimulated Dutch painters to create canvasses of frozen rivers and lakes, drove the Tlingit out of Glacier Bay. All the glaciers we admired today, started to advance, and eventually coalesce, filling the entire bay with one giant glacier. The Tlingit, in their orally preserved history, have stories about this period when they had to abandon their homeland.
In the late18th Century, Captain Vancouver sailed past the front of this glacier, and described it as a six-mile wide wall of ice. This Englishman belonged to a generation which did not see beauty in wild landscapes. While sailing the waters of North America's west coast, he dreamt of English villages, with neatly manicured gardens and cozy houses. The Alaskan coasts, with its rugged, glaciated mountains, somber, impenetrable forests, and dangerous winds and waters held no beauty for this man. He viewed this environment as dangerous, monstrous, gloomy and totally inhospitable. This world filled him with terror. He and his contemporaries charted and looked for profit; the idea of enjoying oneself in such surroundings probably never occurred to them. However, on his ship were a couple of young men who represented a new generation. They were fired up by a new, adventurous approach to the world, a new romanticism that was spreading out of Europe. Edmond Burke is often seen as having spawned this movement with his essay 'On the Sublime and the Beautiful'. Burke claimed that there is beauty in danger and violence, and that threatening landscapes are the most sublime. Soon Turner was painting erupting volcanoes, English adventurous gentlemen traveled hither and yon, searching for the most rugged and terror filled chasms, torrents, storm-swept shores and other such features that struck both horror and awe into their hearts. Tourism to wild places, now called eco-tourism, was born.
When Captain Vancouver sailed past the six-mile wide glacier front at the mouth of what is now called Glacier Bay, the Little Ice Age was already waning, and soon the big glacier started to collapse and recede to the current state. The Scottish/American naturalist and traveler John Muir, who lived at the height of 19th century eco-romanticism made Glacier Bay famous when he published his thoughts and travel experiences in 1895. Now, a National Park, this wondrous and sublime piece of Alaska is very carefully preserved and managed for the pleasure of people like us, who are, and will be for years to come, following in the footsteps of the Tlingit, Vancouver, Muir and others. Today we stood in awe of the beauty which Vancouver could not see, but which Muir so effectively described as :'…an icy wildness, unspeakably pure and sublime'.
A thousand or more years ago, when the Tlingit people came to South-eastern Alaska, the land they found was 'basking' in a relatively warm time of the current 'Interglacial' period. They found Glacier Bay to be a pleasant place to settle; there must have been salmon running in the streams, and plenty of wildlife and seafood on and beyond the shores. What the sea didn't provide, the land did, and trade via the passes over the coastal mountain range provided such luxuries as dall sheep horn and lichen dyes, in exchange for fish oil and shells. It is impossible to say how these people saw their own land, but I believe they saw it as most people see their land: primarily as a place to live in, and to use, but also as a place to love and revere. But during the 14th to 17th Centuries, the same 'Little Ice Age' that caused crop failures and starvation in northern Europe, and stimulated Dutch painters to create canvasses of frozen rivers and lakes, drove the Tlingit out of Glacier Bay. All the glaciers we admired today, started to advance, and eventually coalesce, filling the entire bay with one giant glacier. The Tlingit, in their orally preserved history, have stories about this period when they had to abandon their homeland.
In the late18th Century, Captain Vancouver sailed past the front of this glacier, and described it as a six-mile wide wall of ice. This Englishman belonged to a generation which did not see beauty in wild landscapes. While sailing the waters of North America's west coast, he dreamt of English villages, with neatly manicured gardens and cozy houses. The Alaskan coasts, with its rugged, glaciated mountains, somber, impenetrable forests, and dangerous winds and waters held no beauty for this man. He viewed this environment as dangerous, monstrous, gloomy and totally inhospitable. This world filled him with terror. He and his contemporaries charted and looked for profit; the idea of enjoying oneself in such surroundings probably never occurred to them. However, on his ship were a couple of young men who represented a new generation. They were fired up by a new, adventurous approach to the world, a new romanticism that was spreading out of Europe. Edmond Burke is often seen as having spawned this movement with his essay 'On the Sublime and the Beautiful'. Burke claimed that there is beauty in danger and violence, and that threatening landscapes are the most sublime. Soon Turner was painting erupting volcanoes, English adventurous gentlemen traveled hither and yon, searching for the most rugged and terror filled chasms, torrents, storm-swept shores and other such features that struck both horror and awe into their hearts. Tourism to wild places, now called eco-tourism, was born.
When Captain Vancouver sailed past the six-mile wide glacier front at the mouth of what is now called Glacier Bay, the Little Ice Age was already waning, and soon the big glacier started to collapse and recede to the current state. The Scottish/American naturalist and traveler John Muir, who lived at the height of 19th century eco-romanticism made Glacier Bay famous when he published his thoughts and travel experiences in 1895. Now, a National Park, this wondrous and sublime piece of Alaska is very carefully preserved and managed for the pleasure of people like us, who are, and will be for years to come, following in the footsteps of the Tlingit, Vancouver, Muir and others. Today we stood in awe of the beauty which Vancouver could not see, but which Muir so effectively described as :'…an icy wildness, unspeakably pure and sublime'.
