Glaciers: they are sculptors, carvers and artists. When the Bitterroot Mountains, the Missions and the Rockies were raised from the floor of the ocean it was the glaciers that came behind, crawling over the surface, grinding and eroding the face of the land.

They buried our now green valleys under hundreds of tons of ice, filling these to the brim, inundating lakes and changing the paths of rivers. Crinkled with crevasses, burning the eyes with the reflected light of the sun; apparently, but not in repose – today’s glaciers hang in our mountains like clouds, draped seductively around pointed summits or fanned out in wide swaths of white against the cobalt fields of the sky. Listen to learn more…

This Field Note was written by Charles Finn. Would you be interested in writing one? Contact Allison De Jong, Field Notes editor, at adejong [at] montananaturalist [dot] org or 406.327.0405. Please visit the Field Notes website at the Montana Natural History Center for more information.