Walking On Ice

                                 

I am not a big fan of walking on ice.  I rank "Don't Have To Venture Out In Icy Weather" near the top of my Top Five Reasons I Love Retirement. It's right up there with "Don't Have To Set Alarms" and "Did I Mention I Don't Have To Set Alarms?".  So what would possess me to pay someone to LET me walk on ice?

Yesterday Mr Y. and I took a scenic drive to Matanuska Glacier. This glacier is twenty six miles long and four miles wide. We saw it from a distance coming up the highway and it is beautiful. For 10,000 years it has been moving through an existing valley. Very slowly. And that's how I chose to walk on it. Very slowly.

Much of the glacier area we walked over is covered with dirt and rock but there were areas where the ice was exposed and crossing it was the only way to get closer to the core area.  Trickles of water running down to larger melting streams were frequent and steel panels were laid over some of them for easier crossing. Others routes we were left to to figure out the best way to cross on our own. The fact that there were children navigating the ice and one young man wearing flip flops to higher elevations than I reached did not boost my confidence level one bit.

I enjoy being out in nature. I really do. But there are some parts of nature that I can watch documentaries on and be quite content. Swimming with sharks for instance or walking rope bridges from one edge of a canyon to another come to mind. While the glacier was very interesting and I ended up doing just fine I would have been just as happy to take pictures from an overlook and called it good. Ice is not my thing.