-
About Resurrection Bay…
- “A few years ago, I took a trip to Alaska, which was, of course, amazing. The town of Seward is on Resurrection Bay – and it just sounded like the title of something creepy. There’s a whole lot of glaciers in and around Resurrection Bay – but the one that I found most intriguing was Exit Glacier, which is landlocked, and is receding, as all glaciers are. But what if it wasn’t? What if it suddenly pushed forward, threatening the town… and what if it was more than merely a glacier…
An excerpt from RESURRECTION BAY:
When a glacier calves, you can hear it for miles, the crashing ice echoing back and forth between the towering peaks on either side of the bay. Sometimes you feel it before you hear it – a vibration in your bones that makes your whole body resonate like a tuning fork.
Bones. They know the call of the ice. They sense the relentless push of the glacier. Not just the bones of the living, but the bones of the dead, too.
I’ll tell you what I know – the strange things that happened one bleak and terrible September. I’ll tell you once, but I’ll deny I ever said it, and you’d be better off if you forget you ever heard it. But I’ll tell you all the same.
#
People say it all started the day that newlywed couple died at the face of Exit Glacier, but they just say that because people like things to have a beginning and an end. It makes them comfortable. The truth is, it started before any of us were born. Maybe even before there were any people here at all.
“This world is older and stranger than any of us know,” my dad says. “Never forget that, Anika.” My Dad’s a helicopter pilot. In high season – that’s summertime – he makes his living taking tourists up into Alaska’s big sky to get a first hand look at Nature’s Majesty: the Harding Ice Field, and the many glaciers that carve their way down the mountains feeding into Resurrection Bay. We lived in Resurrection Bay, my Dad, my brother and me, in the port town of Seward.
Seward, not Sewer. It was named after the guy who bought Alaska from Russia. Not our fault he had a lousy last name.
On the day those newlyweds died, Dad got quiet and paced around the house, doing things like looking in the refrigerator as if he might find something uncommon in there, then turning the TV on and off, like he forgot what show he wanted to watch.
“I think the glacier kilt ’em on purpose” my little brother, Sammy said.
“Keep your opinions to yourself,” I told him. “Especially the stupid ones.”…
… I decided to go up to Exit Glacier after school the next day– not just because of the tragedy, but because it had always been my favorite place. I could go there alone, and not feel alone. I could go there with friends, and somehow have a better time just because I was there. I’d read my favorite books there in the glacier’s shadow, and had written my best poems – although I was never dumb enough to get too close to its face.
Going there on that day though. . . it was more than just wanting to in the company of the glacier. Maybe I was having some kind of intuition – or even a premonition – not the kind you see, but the kind you feel in your gut when you know something big is about to happen.
I went as far as last year’s murrain – that’s the mound of earth that marks how far the glacier pushed last winter before the summer sun melted it back. It was a good fifty yards back from the face of the glacier. There were other people around too – lookie-loos watching as the workmen hacked at the ice with jack hammers, and a bulldozer hauled ice away – all behind a police line that had gone up one day too late. They were trying to find the dead couple, but there was a lot of ice left to move.
I was content to keep my distance. I closed my eyes, held out my arms, and felt the glacier breathe.
Glaciers do breathe. It’s a scientific fact. Cold air is heavier than hot air, and so, depending on where you’re standing you can feel the cold air breathing off the glacier, or the warm air rushing in. I always thought it was more than that, though. A glacier’s breath is not a soulless thing. It’s vital and fresh. It’s the reason why tourists can’t capture the truth of it on film – because it’s not what you see, it’s what you feel when you stand in front of a wall of ice…
…[And then I saw it] The glacier was pushing forward. Another chunk of ice fell, then another, then another. It was coming toward me – not at the speed of an avalanche, of course – maybe just an inch or two per second, but for a glacier that’s lightning fast…
…Then something dawned on me, like a secret whispered in my ear – but it didn’t come through words. It came in that bone-feeling shimmying up my arms and legs, vibrating in my joints.
The glacier wants something.
It wants something, and it’s coming to get it. . .