Field Trip: The Dawes Glacier

If you want to experience impermanence, I recommend a visit to the Dawes Glacier, located at the head of Endicott Arm in the Tracy Arm-Fords Terror Wilderness of Southeast Alaska. The approach up the sinuous fjord, beneath the towering cliffs and countless waterfalls (many of them unnamed), will prepare you for the spectacle.

The ice is eternal…and ephemeral. When the massive face of the glacier calves, apartment building-sized blocks of ice crash into the sea, with a sound that reverberates off the walls of the fjord like heroic music.