I flew to Anchorage yesterday and back today and the flight was incredible-gorgeous clear days. These photos don't capture anywhere near the visuals! The Glaciers (I am sure we flew over Glacier Bay National Park), mountains, deep snows, cliffs, and pockets of gray water (from the silts that the glacier's deposit), and turquoise blue - just amazing. You could see where the glacial outwashes were creating new lands at the mouths of the rivers. In fact it was like flying over the earth 40 million years ago - before Homo sapiens, nearer to the primordial soup time. And knowing what I know now (as a Homo sapiens 40,002,009 years later, and under the presumption that we are in a global warming period), you can see from 30,000 feet the how, what, and where will be the future human settlement on these vast unscathed landscapes: You can tell where the Minnesota and South Dakota prairie potholes will be; the outerbanks and Cape Cods with their mini golf, hotels and vacationing college students; You can see where the big shipping ports and industrial areas will grow, with their neighboring big coastal cities; and those broad, flat glacial outwash will become the fertile agricultural lands like the historic Mississippi floodplains; you can see the subdivisions, the malls and further up the valleys will be the mountain-lake hunting and vacation lodges; and you can see where timbers and forests will be clear-cut to make room for all this development, and highways and bridges and airports; and you can see the sheer rock faces that will become the rock-climbers' mecca. This is what you can see as you fly over this area called the "last frontier". Will all these National Parks and Preserves remain as I see them a thousand years from now? Somehow I think not.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
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