The Athabasca Glacier is irrefutable proof positive of global warming. In the twenty years since I worked there, the glacier has receded a couple of kilometres. Standing in the spot I'm photographing from, I would have been encased in tens of feet of ice twenty years earlier.
 The dog is my first brindle Great Dane, Cleo. She was a wonderful dog. |
|
 In 1993, Deb had to ride in this slow, air-conditioned bus, listening to the drone of a bored tour guide speaking into a microphone, insulated from direct experience of the highlights and thrills of the glacier...I refused to go on this ride, on principle. |
| (Part of my spiel: upon passing
a sign
of a penguin with blood dripping from its beak, posted beside a
crevasse
by a fellow guide,
"That? Oh, that's the Albino Penguin. They hide in the crevasses. Yes, they're hard to see - they're the same colour as the ice, of course, being Albino, and they generally only come out at night...they're responsible for the loss of the glacier - you know that it is receding, don't you? The Albino Penguins sneak out at night down there at the toe of the glacier, and chew on it to keep their beaks sharp. A little each night...it adds up, night after night...the glacier gets about six feet shorter every year. "Dangerous? Oh, very dangerous, indeed - didn't you notice the blood on his beak? When visitors fall down one of those crevasses, they are never found again; we believe they are quickly consumed by the voracious Albino Penguins...") |
When Deb and her fellow
passengers
got off the bus at the turn-around point, they got to stroll around for
a short time on one of the upper steps of the glacier, which pours out
through the pass ahead of them from a huge bowl formed by a ring of
high
mountain peaks.
This is Lake Joseph (I
think)
which we visited on the drive down to Rocky Mountain House. It
looks
like a doctored picture postcard, but this is truly just a photograph.
It looks just as we saw it with our own eyes on that day.
