Perito Moreno

With heavy steel cramp-ons laced to our feet, we hiked across the edge of the glacier. Everything is blue. Different shades of blue running the length of the glacier like ribbons. It is a wholly different landscape than any that i have ever been before.

It is a blue desert that rapidly changes quality depending on the clouds and sun above. Sky and cloud blend with the ice blurring a horizon or blind when the sun breaks free and the ice is like standing on a bright fluorescent bulb.

Perito Moreno2
The ground is soft, a bed of needles and leaves that has never burned, never been raked, slow to rot since it is frozen for most of the year. You comfortably sink as you walk. A wooden path guides you through the wet spots. Light dances on the ground through a thin tree canopy of bright verdant green.

Walking out of the forest and onto the rocky beach, a rock mound shaped by a violent past rests at the foot of the glacier. From this mount with the enormity of this ice flow ominously in front- never sure if it may break loose-surge and gobble you up- the sublimity contrasts dramatically with the delicacy of the forest near. It is an immense moment.