Long ago and far away a snowflake fell on a mountaintop. Six arms radiated from the center and if eyes had been there to behold its form it would have seemed beauteous indeed. Aging quickly, the projections were the first to go. Neighboring granules pressed closer and closer, the weight above suffocating. No space was left for air and crystals were forced to interlock. Snow became glacial ice, a metamorphic rock. Time passed and a journey began, the solid flowing like a river, following the valley to the sea. At times it crept and at others it swept in leaps and bounds, drawn by gravity and driven by accumulation above. Thirty-five kilometers and more than a hundred years were spanned before the sun shone on this water molecule once again.

With a mighty roar, the glacier cast its children forth to float like ships upon the glassy sea. Growlers, bergy-bits and icebergs drifted with the tides and winds, winding their way between steep walled cliffs, only to find themselves corralled behind the Entrance Moraine in Le Conte Bay. A gallery of shapes surrounded us as we meandered in their midst. Castles with turrets, knights slaying dragons and giant swans mingled with abstract creations in shades of blue that can only be sensed for no words are precise enough to describe their range. Some were transparent, others frosted. Each was an individual, ever changing. Each grabbed the light and tossed it back towards us in its own special way. Tomorrow what we saw today will be no more. The beauty will be no less but the scene will be different to another's eyes. We left nature's sculpture garden to explore the world in other ways. Helicopters and planes transported some to view the striped glacial highways from above. The fishing community of Petersburg attracted others. Zodiacs zipped across Wrangell Narrows to a land of waterlogged soil where carnivorous plants waited in ambush between tea colored rivulets and sphagnum covered hummocks.

The day was diverse and as we sleep we will synthesize its images with those of yesterday building our own memories of southeastern Alaska's shores and waterways.