When Eric and I celebrated our 20th anniversary with a trip to Alaska, he said he wanted to go on a glacier hike. I thought that sounded intruiging, so I arranged one, in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, a dramatic, frozen volcanic area on the Yukon border. We were so fascinated by the experience that crampons have become some of my favorite shoes, and we've since gone on glacier hikes in Iceland, New Zealand, and Svalbard. We have also explored glacial ice from the relative safety of various forms of watercraft.

I thought that a glacier would just be a featureless sheet of ice, but was delighted to find that glaciers are fascinating places full of whorls, twists, and peaks, rife for exploration. Glaciers are not remotely static, but rather are rivers of ice, where the movement of water is temporarily frozen in time. They are places of amazing beauty, fragile and fleeting.