One of my missions here is to embed myself with a pair of glaciologists, although ‘embed’ is far too formal a term for just tagging along as they go about their routine, asking numerous questions, and attempting to help whenever an opportunity arose-- which in the event is certainly not often.

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Hassan Basagic works with a glaciologist from Oregon, the University of Portland, whom I met on The Ice seven years ago but who no longer needs to come here in person. The torch for the actual field work has been passed to two PhD candidates who work sequentially, each for half the season. Hassan’s assistant is Liz Bagshaw, a master's student from Bristol, England. They have been working together for many weeks, and have an easy working rapport. I have thoroughly enjoyed their company around the camp, and am looking forward to our foray.

Carrying packs, the three of us head up the moat, the declivity along the edge of the glacier. Initially, it is not hard going, but soon the rough trail steepens and is more obstructed by rocks of all sizes. Nature did not build all this with us in mind. After a mile or so, we stop at a flagged bamboo pole sticking out horizontally from the vertical glacier edge. Hassan and Liz proceed to carefully measure the length of the exposed bamboo, and its angle. It was set years ago, and has been measured annually since.

We proceed up the moat, stopping at several more stakes, until we have ascended to the point where the vertical glacier edge has diminished from twenty or thirty meters to one or two. Surmounting this, we are on the top surface. To the southeast, it slopes away smoothly into the valley, but in the other is a dramatic icefall that seems to rise all the way to the sky. To me it seems magical enough to do just that. Anywhere near it is off limits: as the disjointed blocks of the fall consolidate into the solid ice we are standing on, the voids are squeezed out but slowly, and the dangerous surface can be deceptively solid-appearing.

As with the edge stakes, Hassan and Liz measure more, vertical ones this time. The sum total of the data collected this way over years will allow an assessment to be made as to whether the ice is shrinking, growing, or in stasis. Mass Balance, as this information is called, is an important piece of the larger puzzle -- the puzzle that is this glacier, these valleys, and ultimately planet earth.

In my own very different way, it is the same puzzle to which I address my efforts, partly the reason I want to be here with them. I have read a fair bit of the conclusions glaciologists come to over time, but this is my first experience interacting in their natural habitat with those who make such interpretations possible. To me, this is fascinating, but these folks do this day in and day out. As the hours have slid by, I am becoming more relaxed with Hassan and Liz, and I feel comfortable asking questions I might not have when we started.

"Does this ever get tedious, just a job?"

"There is a Zen to it." is the reply. "If ever I get to thinking that it is just a job out here, all I have to do is lift my head. How many workplaces look like this?"

I roll this around in my head. There is wisdom in this. There is tedium in every endeavor worth doing, but whether or not it is tolerable is really dependent on one’s own attitude toward it. I deal with my own in this way. The more I think about it the more this parallelism seems something worth keeping: a real demonstration of the convergence of some art and some science. Just what I was hoping for.