My Father and A Glacier

A faded photo of our family from about 1976, near Portage, Alaska; the glacier had not yet retreated far, far back, across its own lake and up into the valley that it had carved into the rock over many thousands of years. 

A shy, well-read and kind man, a scientist, humanist and WWII veteran,  Burt was born on Christmas Day, 1916 in a very Wild West Oklahoma, just as America entered World War I at war with Germany, the country of his father.  On that day in 1916, the glacier stood  high on this spot.

The glacier and the ethereal blue of its ice can no longer be seen from this place.