“Witness” by Sarah Aronson
It was a relief to be dominated by something without malice.
— Tim Winton
I sit on an unstable mound of sand and gravel, recent deposits from the receding glacier in front of me. An archway of muddy ice thaws away from a hump of bedrock. In the gap between them is a blank, dark space where meltwater falls in steady drips, a beaded curtain. The drops join the opaque torrent below.
A year ago, when I was here last, this stream didn’t exist. In that time, the glacier has changed.
I have changed.
Now, water surges beneath its weak limb, where rocks perch perilously and fall without warning, without wind. It’s Saturday afternoon, but we are alone, passing a single tour group, coming off the icefield.
Alder pollen streaks my black pant leg, an aurora on my thigh, where my notebook rests.
Matt picks through the charcoal rock, miniature, barely a quarter mile away. His black jacket melds with the moonscape—a fleck among granite. To be this near a glacier is a new experience, one he’ll likely never have again. He’s drawn in, lost, but a loose rock, a calving could take him out. Before he wandered off, I pleaded please be careful. Please.
The body of a glacier is deceptive.
Like a mood ring, it changes color with the light and seasons. Dulling in the summer, crisping to white in the new snowfall after the cleansing autumn downpours. In winter, cloudless skies highlight its grades of blue, gray skies reflect dirt in the ribbons of moraine.
At a distance, it appears stable, serene even. Impenetrable. It also looks more riverine, a hundred miles of downward flowing ice. Up close, the body is porous, fragile, and more difficult to read. Qualities I recognize in myself. The surface of a glacier is series of slits and tongues, multi-tiered waves in every direction. Crevasses, sapphire incisions cut into its pale skin. The blues, watercolor and cyanotype, soft and hard, pull like an invitation. Suncups divot the ice, freckles of boulders and stones. Dark pockets wear into the lip— holes where the sun-warmed rocks melted through. They feel like warnings.
A white gyre of arctic terns animates the foreground of the rust and green mountainside. Suddenly, a hunk of the glacier breaks off in a loud cascade—the white waterfall shelves on a wet stain of rock. My eyes search for Matt. I don’t see him. I wonder if he heard the calving, and will him to appear over the rise of the clay hill, to emerge and close the distance between us.
I wait.
A lithe movement skirts the giant grey dunes.
Several minutes later, within earshot he says, “It looked like you might’ve been praying.”
“If writing is a form of prayer,” I say.
We are each other’s witness. I hold the man. In turn, he holds me. A dance unfolding under the gaze of the glacier.
This is what it means to be landmarked.
This is an excerpt from a chapter from the manuscript in progress about my relationship with a glacier three miles from my childhood home. The work-in-progress explores the complex intersection of human connections and the natural world while seeking to disrupt anthropocentrism.
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Sarah Aronson Artist Statement:
I am mothered by an urban glacier of Southeast Alaska–a body which consumes me creatively. My first award-winning collection of poetry, “And Other Bodiless Powers” circled this glacier and grappled with desire, distance, ice and rain.
Poet, writer, radio host, podcaster, and therapist. I was born and raised in Alaska, and belong to winter. I am Irish-American and I speak English and a bit of Finnish. My economic reality is that I am firmly middle class: I do not own a home and I am saddled with student debt. I hold an MSW degree and an MFA in poetry.
As a therapist, I hold space for healing daily, which sometimes leaves me with scraps of creative time and energy for myself. I employ creativity in each of my pursuits, and require creative projects to thrive.
