In Vermont we often come across stones and boulders left “high & dry” by the glacier. I enjoy imagining these under two-mile thick ice but, frankly, it is impossible to do so.
How delightful it was to see erratics on top of the glacier yesterday making their ways into the future at some point as the ice melted. The quantity of glacial tills is astonishing, truly beyond imagining.
My good friend, fellow photographer and traveling pal, Rob, on top of the glacier with a stone “soon” to become an erratic somewhere downstream in the glacier’s path.
A much larger erratic, the size of a small bus, in the lateral moraine.
The forces involved, the time spans, the shear volumes—these are things beyond our day-to-day lives. It seemed no accident that I had a copy of Thoreau’s Walking with me and opened to read “Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present.”
The amount of material the glacier transports is beyond imagining, even as we hiked along the lateral moraine! The gray area in the background is soil and rocks still on top of ice that is fifty to one hundred feet deep.
Still Learning To See 
Beautiful…you’re a lucky guy John!
Burr
Thanks Burr. I brought some of your syrup up for a few special people and the loved it!
John
Thanks for taking me along on this amazing trip. Funny that Alaska has always been up there just waiting to be traveled to and photographed. Even before it was called Alaska and when photos relied on memory (brain memory that is).
Keep those pictures and words coming.
Love
Marti
Let’s pull together a family trip so all of us can see it together!
John, you really should not refer to Rob as “erratic”… even though he may prefer to sit there and take a ride on the glacier. 😉
Wish I were there being “erratic” with the erratics… with you guys!