“We’re going to the glacier!” We would yell to Mom as we sped off on our bikes. Nearly every sunny day was spent at the glacier, climbing rocks, hiking trails, fishing for ice, and (most fun of all) lying to tourists. We got a kick out of the questions we heard.
“What is the humidity here?” as the rain drizzled down.
“What is our elevation?” They had just come in on a cruise ship. Their elevation was pretty close to zero.
“Why is the glacier so dirty?” This was my favorite questions to answer.
“Those teenagers,” we would say. “They are always joyriding out on the glacier. They keep leaving their muddy tire tracks.” Or “That’s actually not the real glacier. The real glacier is out for cleaning, so they’ve just pinned up a huge photo.”
The tourists would nod in wonder.
The real answer, of course, is that the ice picks up boulders as it flows slowly down the valley. Mendenhall Glacier’s face was more than a mile from the parking lot, but because it is so huge, it’s easy to lose perspective. Boulders look like gravel, gravel looks like dust.
But what’s so fun about that?
2 comments:
One question that always amused me was, "Do you take American money here?"
"Where are the whales?"
Geoffrey answered, straight-faced, "keep watching!"
That tourist is probably still waiting for a whale to breach.
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