Melt

by Robbi McCoy

  “Here’s the first one,” Jordan said, halting at the edge of the glacier where an orange flag was clearly visible halfway across the ice. It protruded from the top of a teardrop-shaped device about the size of a beach ball.

  “Kelly!” Chuck called, waving her closer. “Get a shot of that buoy.”

  “It’s a Westgate buoy,” Sonja offered. “It’s named after Jordan because she designed it.”

  Chuck turned an inquiring glance toward Jordan.

  “Yes,” she acknowledged. “A lot of teams have gone to these now. They replaced the more fragile ones we used to use.”

  “The Marquette buoys,” Sonja elaborated. “They were a piece of crap.”

  “Oh, Sonja!” Jordan said, frowning her disapproval. “They were not a piece of crap. These buoys float up better under pressure, so they last longer. Grinding ice is pretty darn powerful and destroys a lot of expensive equipment.”

  “She’s always telling us the cameras are worth more than all of us combined,” Sonja quipped.

  “Chuck,” Jordan pleaded, “please don’t say the Marquette buoys are crap.”

  Chuck laughed. “Don’t worry.” He screwed up his face and closed one eye. “Marquette? I think I know that guy.”

  “I’m not surprised. He was a pioneer in this field. He worked in Alaska primarily, not in Greenland. He’s retired now.”

  Kelly took several shots of the orange and white buoy embedded in the surface of the glacier.

  “Now I remember!” Chuck blurted. “I met Marquette last year at a conference in Dallas. They were giving him an award, some lifetime achievement thing.”

  “I heard about that,” Jordan said.

  “I had a chat with him after dinner that night. I told him what I did, you know, spending the summers out here. I mentioned you, among others, as one of the scientists I’ve been following. He remembers you.”

  Kelly was puzzled to see the sudden look of alarm on Jordan’s face, short-lived but unmistakable.

  “Of course he remembers her,” Kelly intervened. “He was her mentor.”

  “What did he say?” Jordan asked, her tone casual, but the look in her eyes suggesting anything but.

  “He said you were one of the finest researchers in the field. He was glad to see how well you’d done.”

  “Oh,” Jordan said, looking relieved, “that was nice of him.”

  * * *

  Jordan’s knees had gone weak when Chuck mentioned talking about her to Marquette. But Marquette had been the flawless professional, giving no hint of the scandal Jordan had caused him.

  “What’s the purpose of the buoy?” Kelly asked.

  Jordan shook off her anxiety. “The buoys are great. They have a transmitter that sends us their position at regular intervals throughout the day. We can track not only how fast and how far they travel, but since they flow with the ice, we can model the flow patterns as well. So far this summer we’ve calculated the speed of this glacier at ten meters per day. That’s five meters a day faster than last year.”

  Chuck whistled. “Are you kidding? That’s nuts!”

  “Yes, it is. Just galloping along.” Jordan appreciated Chuck’s experience, that he had taken the time and trouble to educate himself about his subject matter. She hated talking to journalists who knew nothing about the interview topic. It invariably led to mistaken conclusions she worried would be attributed to her. But Chuck had been on this beat for years and he understood the science better than most of her students.

  “Why the huge jump in one year?” he asked.

  Jordan continued walking. “Ice is extremely sensitive to temperature changes. One or two degrees can cause enough of a difference to start a cavalcade of events. You go slow and steady up to a point, you know, and then suddenly you’re past equilibrium and all hell breaks loose.”

  Chuck sputtered. “Doesn’t exactly look like all hell breaking loose here, Jordan.”

  “Maybe not to you. But ten meters a day, to me, is all hell breaking loose. The Jakobshavn Glacier, the big one in Ilulissat, is now moving at an unheard of thirty meters a day. It’s happening all over the country.”

  He nodded. “Global warming.”

  “Uh-huh. In addition to measuring the rate of travel, we’re also measuring the amount of meltwater coming off this glacier. We’ve discovered the same sort of increase there. A huge jump in water output. Some of the water that melts ends up creating a layer of liquid between the bedrock and the ice. It acts as a lubricant, making the ice move much more easily and therefore faster. So the more the ice melts, the faster it moves. It’s a cumulative effect.”

  “Sort of changes the whole definition of the word ‘glacial,’ doesn’t it?” Chuck observed with an ironic smile.

  “These glaciers aren’t acting much like glaciers these days. If this glacier maintained its speed and rate of melt, it could last for thousands of years more. But it won’t. It will recede at a greater and greater pace each year. It’s on an unstoppable course toward its demise.”

  Kelly was in full view in front of them, lining up her shots. Jordan couldn’t help admiring with an almost painful longing her perfect ass encased in those teasingly tight jeans. That can’t be the best outfit for climbing over rocks and crawling into tight spaces, she decided. But it did provide some terrific sightseeing for Jordan.

  “What about the interior ice?” Chuck asked.

  “It’s more stable, but it’s melting faster too. The smaller it gets, the faster it melts because the ice sheet reflects less of the sun’s radiation, so the temperature in the vicinity rises and accelerates the process. Who knows how long it will last at this rate.”

  Chuck narrowed his eyes at her. “I don’t like to hear a scientist say ‘who knows.’”

  Jordan shrugged. “Too much of this is new territory for us. It may already be too late to stop it. Even if we were able to completely halt the rising temperature at this point, which doesn’t seem likely, it wouldn’t reverse the process. When the ice is gone, we’re looking at a seven meter rise in sea level and a climate none of us can predict. Many scientists believe we’re past the point of no return.”

  “Do you agree with that conclusion?”

  Jordan hesitated. “Let’s just say I prefer to live in a place with a little elevation.”

  “I’d like to walk out on the glacier,” Kelly called, jogging toward them.

  “You’ll have a chance to do that further up,” Jordan said. “Believe me, it’s worth the wait. We’ve got something very special to show you.”

  Kelly nodded and went back to her work. As she squatted beside the glacier to take a shot across the surface of the ice, the denim across her rear end stretched so tight a flea could have used it as a trampoline. Jordan tore her gaze away to glance at Chuck, who smiled roguishly.

  After another half hour of walking, Jordan heard the noise she was anticipating, running water, lots of it. Back home, this sound would signal the approach of a waterfall, as it did here. But this was a waterfall unlike any Jordan had ever encountered and she was excited to be able to show it off.

  Their ATV Curly was parked up ahead where the others awaited their arrival.

  “Oh, my God!” Jordan heard from the front of their group as Kelly made it there ahead of them. Hearing her, Chuck took off at a trot to catch up, moving surprisingly nimbly for his size.

  Jordan approached the spot where they stood, knowing they were both blown away by the sight as she had been when she first saw it. In front of them was a fifty-foot wide bottomless blue pit carved deep down into the ice, so deep they couldn’t see the bottom. Across the pit, about thirty feet below the surface of the glacier, was a massive stream of meltwater emerging from a hole in the ice and freefalling into the pit.

  Both Chuck and Kelly looked down with their mouths open, stunned into silence. Jordan caught Malik’s eye and the two of them smiled knowingly at one another. It was a magnificent sight to behold the first time. And the second and third and fourth.
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  “It’s a waterfall!” Chuck finally said.

  “In a glacier,” Kelly added.

  “How far does it go?” asked Chuck, turning to Jordan excitedly.

  “To the bottom,” Jordan answered. “Right here, the ice is three hundred feet thick. We put a line down and that’s what we concluded, that this waterfall has carved a hole all the way through the ice to the bedrock.”

  Chuck turned his gaze back to the waterfall and whistled appreciatively. “Where does it go after it gets to the bottom?”

  “We think it turns into a stream down there just like any waterfall anywhere. So it flows under the ice to the sea, through natural contours at the base of this canyon. It forms a kind of slip-and-slide for the ice above. And that’s what I believe is the reason for the rapid movement of this glacier, all that liquid water carrying it along.”

  “This is mind-blowing!” Chuck remarked. Obviously, even with all his experience, he had never seen a sinkhole quite like this before. “Sheffield, you wanna…” He turned to locate her. She was at the edge of the ice, camera clicking. “Ah. She’s got it.”

  “This feature hasn’t been here very long,” Jordan said. “It probably won’t hang around much longer with the movement of the ice. Your timing was lucky.”

  “It’s incredible!” breathed Kelly, pausing in her picture taking to simply stare. Then she turned to them, energized, and said, “I have to go down there!” Her face blazed with excitement.

  “It isn’t safe,” Jordan informed her. “You can walk out on the glacier and get some different angles, but you’ll want to stay well clear of the edge.”

  “No,” Kelly contradicted decisively. “I have to go down. I need to get below the top of the waterfall so I can shoot it looking up. You’ve got equipment, right? Ropes, rappelling gear? I’ve done it before, in caves.”

  “Caves are a lot more stable than ice,” Jordan stated.

  “Sorry, but this isn’t something I can pass up.” She strode to the ATV, motioning for Malik to accompany her. “Where’s the gear?”

  “Chuck,” Jordan implored, “aren’t you going to stop her?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. That’s her job and that’s why I brought her along. Shit, this girl’s got the goods.” He winked at Jordan. “Besides, she’s not going to listen to me.”

  They watched as Malik helped Kelly suit up.

  “She’s a good photographer, then?” Jordan asked.

  “Hell, yeah! She’s still young. She’ll get better. I don’t think she knows what direction to go yet, how to specialize. She’s really great at seeing something profound in ordinary objects and teasing a surprise out of it. She’s going to be an artist, a real artist someday. But personally, I wouldn’t mind if she catches the itch to do this kind of thing permanently. I could use a regular photographer to go down in sinkholes and shit like that.”

  Wearing a harness, fingerless gloves, helmet and crampons, Kelly traipsed over and handed her camcorder to Chuck. “You shoot me while I’m shooting this,” she instructed. “Film the whole thing and don’t forget to zoom in a few times. Oh, man, this is going to be awesome!” She walked to the edge of the pit, seeming not the least bit frightened.

  “Chuck,” Jordan began, speaking quietly, “did she know ahead of time I’d be here?”

  He nodded. “I gave her a list of our contacts.”

  “Did she tell you she knew me?”

  “No.” His gaze lingered on her face, as if he were trying to read her. “Should she have? Is there some issue?”

  “No!” Jordan rapidly asserted. “None at all. I was just curious.”

  “Here goes,” Kelly announced, giving them a thumbs-up as she leaned back at the edge of the ice pit, her camera over her shoulder, both hands on the rope. She carefully lowered herself over the smooth edge and down the vertical wall, planting the claws of her crampons firmly into the ice with each step.

  The rest of them watched her go down. Chuck stood with his feet firmly planted, filming with a steady hand. Jordan gulped nervously as Kelly’s head disappeared from view. Nobody spoke. Jordan and Chuck moved closer so they could keep her in view.

  At regular intervals, she stopped, leaned back with her weight on the ropes, and shot photos. Then she descended a few more feet. The lip and walls of the pit were smooth, sculpted by flowing water like the rocks of any river, but this had happened over a matter of days instead of centuries. Kelly’s main line had already carved a groove four inches deep at the lip.

  The ice in the pit darkened the deeper it went, starting at the top as stark white and gradually changing to sky blue, then a haunting cerulean and eventually midnight blue far below.

  Kelly had gotten to the cerulean layer where she could look upward into the spray of the waterfall, capturing the photos she had lusted after.

  She’s really something, Jordan thought. Not everyone would be able to hang on the edge of a vertical wall above a bottomless pit. No matter how much you trusted the security of a nylon rope, it was scary. Jordan didn’t think she could do it. She had a fear of heights and knew from past experience how immobilizing that panic could be. But Kelly showed no hesitation at all as she proceeded through her methodical work.

  She looked up and caught Jordan’s gaze. She grinned, her eyes sparkling with happiness. Jordan smiled back at her, full of respect and admiration.

  “We’re at twenty-five meters,” Malik reported. “Eighty-two feet.”

  “That’s far enough,” Jordan said to Chuck.

  He gave a short nod, then shouted into the pit. “That’s as far as you’re going, Sheffield! Get your butt back up here!”

  Kelly nodded her understanding, took a few more shots, then began her steady ascent back to the surface. When her head finally appeared over the rim of the pit, Julie took the camera from her, then Brian pulled her out.

  As she unbuckled the harness, she exclaimed, “That was so cool!” She looked at Jordan as she exuded triumph. “That was so cool!” she repeated, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

  Chuck gave her a one-armed hug as he handed the camcorder to her. “Damned fine job!” he beamed. “Now that’s not something you’re going to see every day! Not even in Greenland.”

  Jordan was happy too, happy to be able to share the experience and happy to see Kelly so exultant.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Kelly walked up to the sink where Jordan was piling dishes into sudsy water.

  “It’s my turn to clean up,” she explained.

  “I’ll help,” offered Kelly, picking up a dish towel. She took a plate from Jordan and wiped it dry with the towel.

  Lunch had been a satisfying but odd combination plate of macaroni and cheese and canned tamales. Predictably, the conversation had hinged on global warming, the disappearing Greenland ice sheet and Greenland’s changing culture. Chuck and Malik, standing by the big tent, were still engaged in that discussion, their expressions suggesting that Chuck was enjoying the debate and Malik was frustrated. Kelly wasn’t surprised. It was Chuck’s typical position to play devil’s advocate, to draw people out and get them to talk candidly in an impassioned defense of their position. It was a journalist’s technique he had employed so long that it had become his ordinary mode of conversing.

  “You were impressive today,” Jordan remarked. “You didn’t seem scared at all.”

  “I was too excited to be scared. It was the most thrilling thing I’ve ever done. I can’t wait to see the photos.”

  “I’d like to see them too.” Jordan gazed at her with an expression of admiration, holding out another plate.

  Her eyes fixed on Jordan’s, Kelly reached for the plate and grasped Jordan’s hand instead. The aluminum plate fell to the ground, clattering briefly on the gravel.

  “Oh, sorry,” Kelly said, reaching down to pick it up.

  She felt light-headed, struck again by how inviting Jordan’s demeanor seemed. She wondered if she was imagining it. But the woman beside her was no Ice Queen
. Her eyes were full of warmth. Kelly was moved to speak from the heart and confess her feelings.

  “Jordan,” she ventured, putting the plate back in the suds. “There’s something I want to tell you.”

  Just then, the sound of raised voices distracted them both. Malik loomed threateningly near Chuck, blurting in his hesitant English, “You do not know what you are talking about! An ancient culture is being lost here because of global climate change.”

  Atka stood beside Malik, looking alert, aware of his master’s increasing anxiety.

  “What the…” Jordan uttered, drying her hands on the towel.

  “Adapt or fucking perish,” Chuck replied calmly.

  Jordan walked toward them and Kelly followed.

  “How do you expect the Greenlander to adapt?” Malik asked contentiously. “This is the Arctic. Without hunting and fishing, what do we have?”

  “Oil,” Chuck answered matter-of-factly. “As soon as this country starts drilling for oil in earnest, everything will change. Hell! Cut yourself loose from Denmark and you’ll be swimming in money. Imagine all that wealth being divided among a mere sixty thousand citizens. You’ll all be fucking rich. You won’t have to eat whale meat anymore.”

  Malik’s glare had not diminished. “We like whale meat.”

  Chuck gave a slight nod to the women as they approached, the twinkle in his eye suggesting he was having a grand old time. “I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” he said to Malik. “Look at you. Your father was a hunter. Barely scraped by, I’m guessing, with nothing but essentials. You’re going to be a scientist. Geologist? Oceanographer? Something like that, right? Some big shot egghead type with a comfortable apartment and a fancy car. Thanks to global warming.”

  Malik bristled. “Global warming is a huge, devastating and avoidable crime against the planet.”

  “Uh-huh,” Chuck agreed. “And traditional Greenland hunting, in the opinion of the world, is a huge, devastating crime against marine mammals.”

  “No endangered species are hunted. This practice is sustainable.”

  “Don’t tell me that, pal. I know all about it. I’m just telling you how things are in the real world. Once Greenpeace started publishing photos of cuddly baby harp seals back in the seventies, you guys were sunk. People don’t want you killing anything cute. Maybe you can’t make a living hunting anymore, but you can make a living farming shrimp or drilling for oil or as a scientist studying the disappearing ice sheet.” He exhibited a self-satisfied smile. “Adapt…or fucking perish. Like every species ever has done since life on earth began.”