It’s no secret that Earth’s powerful processes operate on a
significantly different time-scale from the one humans are used to: tectonic
plates move, trees add rings, rocks weather, and evolution occurs. Most of the
time, however, it IS practically a secret to humans how exactly these processes
occur and what their outcomes have been. We’ve spent centuries trying to figure
out the earth’s secrets, but that’s not nearly enough time for us to fully
understand the landscapes that have had eons to form and re-form.
That being said, we HAVE learned a little about how to
“read” the landscapes left behind by Earth’s ancient history, and perhaps no
landscape allows us to discover a more dramatic and readable story than the one
carved by glaciers.
Land bridges appeared and were crossed, plants flourished
and died, Vikings sailed and plundered, sheep grazed and wandered, cities were
conceived and built, and DU students hiked and pondered—these silent and
magnificent features were witness to it all. From moraines to cirques, hanging
valleys to U-shaped ones, and patterned ground to crevasses in my favorite
place we traveled, Svalbard, the landscapes we saw in Norway were a firsthand
testament to the raw power and impact of just one of earth’s amazing processes.
Just as the ocean can easily make a person feel like a small paper boat (or a
bruise-able and unbalanced Svalbard zodiac rider, if a more impactful reminder
is necessary), a glaciated landscape stands as a calm and serene reminder of
our place in geologic time; our role in the world as the result of just another
earthly process.
I hope life will one day return me to a place as
awe-inspiring as Norway; a place that can teach me so much about history, life,
and the ways of the world. Even if it doesn’t, though, I won’t have to be reminded
to heed some of Norway’s most poignant messages: appreciate the earth for both
its strength and its vulnerability, recognize the importance of working with
the environment instead of against it, allow the earth’s landscapes to inspire
and motivate, and—most of all—never try to operate vans that drive like soggy
cereal boxes in towns with small roads and trash cans.
Takk for alt, Norway. Give my best to the governor.
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