Icefields

by Thomas Wharton

  All that work for nothing, as it turned out. When he reached the fire drum, he had heard behind him the familiar groan and crack of ice giving way, then a heavy splash. He had turned to see ripples spreading out across the meltwater tarn. The shelf of dirty ice along its rim had collapsed. The pinnacle was gone.

  But ice floats, he thought at the time. Where did it go? The rock and mud clinging to the pinnacle must have weighted it down.

  Trask shakes his head. The wasted effort. Didn’t the fellow realize how short-lived his creation would be? He probably did. That’s why the thing had been unfinished, looking as if it was just emerging from the ice.

  Better stick to building roads and bridges.

  He gulps down the whisky, then holds the glass at eye level, his elbow resting on the table. A framed photograph of Jim sits on his desk. He looks for a long time into the eyes of his son, and then glances up at the window. Shadows of raindrops slide down the thin curtains.

  There is another possibility, he finally admits, one that instinct tells him to keep to himself. There are enough odd characters around here already. Loners, drunks, an eccentric doctor. He wouldn’t care to be thought one of them. And Byrne would tell him that what he saw could easily be explained as a natural phenomenon of ice erosion. Condescending blather. No, he decides, he won’t be turning this into one of his incredible tales to entertain guests at the chalet.

  Trask pours himself another glass. He raises it in the air. A toast, to the anonymous artist.

  23

  In the new year a telegram arrives from Byrne’s stepmother, telling him that his father is ill and wishes to see him. He packs a suitcase, buys his train ticket, and then rides out to the chalet in one of Trask’s motor-coaches to see Elspeth. He finds her in the glasshouse. Kneeling in front of a planter, cutting roses. He tells her he is leaving the day after tomorrow.

  —I’d like you to come with me. To meet Kate. And my father.

  —How will you introduce me?

  —This is my friend, the woman I don’t see for days, who leaves flowers on my desk while I’m out. The woman who comes to my house in the middle of the night, then disappears the next morning.

  She says nothing, turns back to her work. He picks up one of the tools lying on the potting table, a slender metal cone with a wooden handle.

  —There’s one of these in every garden and nursery I’ve been in, but I have no idea what it’s called.

  —That is a dibble.

  —Not a very grand name, is it?

  —It does a humble job. Making holes.

  He smiles.

  —It’s a good thing I didn’t make botany my life’s work.

  She sets down the garden shears and stands up, wiping her hands on the front of her apron.

  —I’ll go with you, she says, but I have to see to a few things around here before I can leave.

  —I’ll wait.

  24

  They return in the spring, having stayed with Kate for almost a month after the death of Byrne’s father.

  There are days in Jasper when all the faces Byrne sees on the street are those of strangers. He overhears scraps of conversation in languages he cannot identify. He finds windows of restaurants and gift shops inscribed with new and unfamiliar names. Old wooden shop fronts and hotel doors refurbished with bright awnings, lit with flutings of turquoise and pink neon, a novelty that the park administrators loathe. He wonders if somehow he lost his way and wandered unwittingly over an unknown pass into another town, in some more prosperous valley.

  On a cool evening in April, the most disorienting sight. Sara, stepping lightly from an automobile on Connaught Drive. The Sara of a quarter century ago. A mirage, an impossibility. He approaches, heart pounding, and then she turns.

  Byrne can only stare in wonder at this youthful ancient woman. Sara’s daughter, Louisa. And her husband, a tall, soft-spoken man whose name Byrne forgets moments after they are introduced. The two of them have just returned from their honeymoon.

  —Doctor Byrne is a friend of Mom. And Dad. One of the few who’d sit through their endless stories.

  —Louisa, I’m sorry about your father. I was in England for two months and I didn’t hear about it until I got back.

  Louisa’s grey eyes are like Sara’s. They gaze back at him without fear or scorn.

  —Mom’s selling the homestead. Dad asked her to. She’s moving into town, and she says she’s buying one of those new phonographs. She’s going to sit on her porch and listen to opera.

  Byrne shakes his head.

  —I don’t believe it.

  —She’s been in Edmonton closing the sale on the land. We’re meeting her at the station.

  —I’ll go with you. I haven’t seen her since last summer.

  Louisa smiles.

  —I remember something Mom said, when we were visiting Dad at the hospital. He was hoping to come home in the spring, and Mom said that in Jasper there used to be two sure signs that winter was over. One was the glacier lily poking up through the snow, and the other was Doctor Byrne stepping off the train.

  —I never thought she’d ever go anywhere near the station. Or the town for that matter.

  —Here she is now.

  Byrne follows her gesturing hand. Sara is there, on the far side of the busy street. At her feet a bulging leather satchel, the one Swift had called his portfolio, in which he had kept all his important papers.

  Sara waves, waiting for a slow cavalcade of automobiles to pass before she crosses. He has seen that look in her eyes before. She has something to tell them. Something that happened on her trip, a story worth sharing.

  He steps into the street, propelled by the ingrained habit of courtesy, to help her across.

  At that moment, dodging through the stream of traffic, he understands that her woven fabric of legend and history includes him, like a figure in a crowded tapestry. The same way he had thought of her. With her words transcribed into his notebook, he had set her aside as he would a museum artifact. One facet of a design he hoped to complete when his long vigil came to an end.

  Now he sees himself as a character in a story told to her daughter, and perhaps some day to her grandchildren. The doctor, Edward Byrne. The one who fell into a crevasse. He wonders how the story she tells them, the one he is moving through now, will end.

  25

  Watched Elspeth yesterday in the glasshouse, her hands delving and turning in rich, dark earth. She says she would never use a fork or trowel for this task. While I always seem to have something in my hand, a tongue depressor, a magnifying glass, a stick. Something to hold between me and the cold, wet hide of the world.

  She never asks about the glacier, about whether I’m still keeping on with the vigil. Sometimes I think I’ve come around to her way of thinking on the matter, but a twenty-five year habit isn’t easy to break. Right now I can hear the sound of water running outside my window. The snow is melting.

  26

  June 20, 1923. Jasper is flooded with the sun’s heat, but spring warmth has scarcely touched the Arcturus valley. To travel from one region to the other on this day, one must pass a threshold of low clouds shedding ice rain. On the far side the sky clears, but the sun’s heat is diminished.

  This year Byrne is a guest at the opening ceremony of the Glacier Tour. He had agreed to act as an advisor during the trial run three days before, so that none of Trask’s machines, or their important passengers, would end up at the bottom of a crevasse. Now that the road and the turnaround point are ready, Trask has invited him to be the first person to step from an ice-crawler onto Arcturus glacier.

  Elspeth sees him off for the day on the chalet steps.

  —You weren’t invited? he asks.

  —I’m sure the idea never entered Frank’s head. He probably considered having me stand here, waving a silk handkerchief, while he and the boys rode off into glory.

  —And here you are.

  —Yes, but I only came out to ask a favour.

 
She holds out her hand. In her palm sits a green, egg-shaped stone.

  —Yesterday a little boy brought me this. He was hiking around on the till plain with his father all day. Tourists from New York. You should’ve seen the look on that boy’s face. He thought all the world’s treasures were out there, and he wanted to share them with me.

  —You’re not going to keep it?

  She nods towards the other side of the valley.

  —That’s where it belongs. For all the other boys to find.

  27

  Trask is present to welcome everyone, townsfolk, tourists, visiting dignitaries. He stands before the freshly-painted wooden gates of the bus terminal, conscious of the panorama of snowy mountains that forms the backdrop to his speech of welcome.

  The cavalcade makes its progress from the bus terminal beside the chalet to the staging area in plush new motorcoaches. Byrne sits next to a Japanese alpinist, the leader of the upcoming expedition to remote Mount Alberta. The story in town has it that the Japanese team plans to leave a silver ice axe at the summit, in honour of their emperor. Stitched into the high collar of the alpinist’s coat is a tiny silver crest, the stylized image of a creature Byrne cannot identify.

  The rocking of the motorcoach as it crawls across the till plain makes the two men bump shoulders. They turn and smile at one another.

  The alpinist introduces himself with brisk formality.

  —Allow me to break the ice, as you say in English.

  His name is Kagami. His hand, when Byrne clasps it in a brief handshake, is warm and dry. He understands that the doctor is an expert on the glaciers of the region.

  —I myself, he says quietly, have a keen interest in glacial dynamics. Perhaps too keen. I once spent a night in a crevasse, on the Mer de Glace of Mont Blanc. Purely out of scientific curiosity.

  He smiles, adjusts the glasses on his nose.

  —A foolish thing to do.

  Byrne nods in agreement, and then, after a moment, asks,

  —So what was it like? In the crevasse.

  —Cold, Kagami says.

  To his own surprise, Byrne laughs.

  —Cold, Kagami says again, and Byrne wonders if any humour was intended in the reply. Kagami seems to be searching for words.

  —There was a thunderstorm that night, he says after a long moment. The ice lit up, blinded me. When it was dark again I thought of my family. It seemed as if I could hear their voices, far in the distance. This was the way I would leave them. Cold and alone.

  The conversation has fallen into an unexpected chasm. Byrne searches for a bridge.

  —The symbol on your collar. What does it represent?

  —This is Ryu, the dragon. The emblem of our mountaineering society. And a good luck charm.

  —Why is that?

  —The dragon has power over clouds and rain. In winter it hides in a dark blue lake, and on the first day of spring it ascends to heaven.

  The motorcoach stops with a jolt. They have arrived at the terminus, where Trask has built a concrete platform for his ice-crawlers. The guests step off the bus dreamily. Lulled in the cradle of the machine.

  The wind buffets them awake. Jacket collars are pulled up and gloves slipped on. Men who have neglected to wear any extra clothing stroll about casually in their shirt sleeves, hoping to appear unimpressed by the biting wind. Others gather together, grinning and making jokes about the balmy weather, caught up in the aura of adventure and at the same time embarrassed by it.

  Trask’s four ice-crawlers have a military look. A boxlike metal exterior, tank treads, and a sliding panel in the roof where passengers can take turns with binoculars or camera. The slogan Road to the Sky is painted in silver on the side of each vehicle. The drivers stand impassively at attention by the doors, polished enough for a parade ground inspection.

  When everyone is assembled on the platform, Trask gives another speech, cautioning his guests to remain in the staging area until it is time to board. He wants everyone to understand the risks before they set out.

  —First the interpreter will tell you about what you will see on the glacier, and what precautions to take if you leave the vehicle, at your own risk.

  It has turned out there are not enough places on board the ice-crawlers for everyone who has been invited, and so the interpreter must deliver his lecture before the tour departs.

  The nervous interpreter steps forward, steers an inquisitive boy away from the edge of the platform. He claps his hands briskly twice, blushes, and begins.

  —If you’ll look to the left there, above the roof of that first ice-crawler. …

  Byrne steps off the platform and does not hear the expected voice calling him back. It must be his drab clothes, he thinks, that camouflage him from the sharp-eyed young interpreter. He blends in with the rocks.

  28

  This is his first visit to the terminus this season. Most of the lower glacier is still mantled in white. Mushroom caps of snow top the boulders around him. Byrne taps his alpenstock ahead of him like an ice axe, wary of the ice crust on the rock beneath his feet.

  Away from the crowd and the rattling motor-coach, he can stand motionless, hold his breath, and hear the rushing of newly released water as though it were flowing through his veins.

  Despite the cool weather the braided meltwater channels are already running swift and deep. He follows one of them upstream to the edge of the tarn, then stops and anchors his alpenstock with a sturdy jab into the wet clay.

  He crouches, pushes up his coat sleeve, and lowers his hand into the bone-cracking cold water.

  Wavering in the reflected sky, the ghost of the

  moon.

  He touches the rounded stones under the surface with his white, bloodless hand.

  There was a seashore, he remembers, stretching out into a grey haze of distance. The young woman in the dream stepped out of his consulting room onto this shore. He had heard the cry of gulls as he woke, the sound of the waves.

  Don’t wade out too far, a woman’s voice calls to him. He turns. She is walking toward him down the strand, dangling her white canvas shoes by their knotted laces. Her hand holding the sun hat on her head. He moves towards her across the stream.

  Freya? Sara.

  Behind her stretches an embankment of grey sand, broken by a flight of stone steps.

  She waves to him, and he remembers. Mother. A day long forgotten, given to him now in its fullness. He takes his hand from the water. Turning away from the sea, from the tide slipping out on Dublin Bay, he walks towards her, blinking, into the fierce sunlight.

  29

  Powdery snow whirls around him in a sudden gust of wind. The riffled water of the tarn laps at his boot. He stands, shivers. There is no longer any reason for him to be here. He glances back at the staging platform. Trask is waiting.

  He turns, and retraces his steps along the shore of the tarn. He slips his wet hand into his pocket and his fingers find the stone Elspeth gave him. He takes it out, sets it down in the dark clay, and walks on.

  He blinks. Something gleamed there for a moment, amid the grey rubble just ahead, catching the sun. Byrne steps forward slowly. A mote of colour appears at his feet. He crouches, leaning on his alpenstock for balance, to get a closer look.

  Peeking out between the halves of a shattered stele of limestone, a tiny purple-pink flower. Orchidaceae. The petals tremble in the icy wind.

  An exceedingly delicate and lovely flower.

  Quickly he takes note of sexual characteristics, number of petals, the single ovate basal leaf. There can be no doubt. Calypso bulbosa. The Calypso Orchid or Venus’ Slipper.

  He kneels in the cold muck.

  An orchid. His scientific understanding contracts. Orchids do not grow here. Nothing grows here. The unceasing collision of ice and rock grinds away all life. Nothing can survive at the terminus.

  Byrne gently nudges aside shards of rock, exposes the stem of the orchid. There must be organic matter of some kind beneath the surface. His f
ingers probe into the cold grit flecked with splinters of ice, slide along a flat surface, a straight edge. He scrapes further and exposes a dull glint of grey metal. The dented, punctured remains of a tin specimen box.

  30

  When he returns to the staging area, the crowd is lining up to board the ice-crawlers. One of the guests, a man girded in a display of shiny new mountaineering garb, complete with rucksack and hob-nailed boots, asks the interpreter how long it took to pile all those rocks alongside the glacier.

  —No, that’s natural, the interpreter says with a patient smile. It’s a lateral moraine. As I mentioned earlier, the ice did all that work.

  —We’re waiting for you, doctor, Trask calls.

  —Sorry, Byrne says. I’ve decided to pass on this trip. Go ahead without me.

  —Suit yourself.

  Byrne steps up close to the Japanese alpinist, who is standing apart from the line of boarding guests, and touches his shoulder.

  —Aren’t you going on the ice-crawler?

  —No. Mr. Trask invited me to the foot of the glacier, but no farther.

  —Then come with me, Byrne says in a whisper, glancing at the restless crowd with its panoply of cameras. I want to show you something rather extraordinary.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to thank the following people for their help and encouragement: Kristjana Gunnars, Rudy Wiebe; Wendy Dawson, Liz Grieve, and Eva Radford at NeWest Press; Nana Avery, for her stories of Ireland; David Arthur, for sharing his wealth of mountain lore. A special thank you to Sharon and Mary.

  Ben Gadd’s Handbook of the Canadian Rockies (Jasper, Alta: Corax, 1987) was indispensable during the writing of this novel. Sexsmith’s expedition is based on that of James Carnegie, Earl of Southesk, in 1859-60, as described in his book Saskatchewan and the Rocky Mountains (1875).

  Other important works were: Studies on Glaciers by Louis Agassiz, edited and translated by Albert Carozzi, (New York: Hafner 1967); “Edward Byrne: A Life in Ice” by Yoshiro Kagami, Journal of Alpine Exploration, ii, 6 (1951); Climbs and Explorations in the Canadian Rockies, by Hugh Stutfield and J. Norman Collie, London: Longmans, Green and Co. (1903).