FEATURE
Heaven, Hell & Christ On Ice
What I Encountered During a Geological Expedition in Greenland
by Allan Carlson
Quassitilua, August 1: I write from paradise . . . if such a label might still allow for healthy swarms of gnats and mosquitoes. I sit in south Greenland, on a plateau overlooking a seldom-visited fjord running to the north from the larger Bredesfjord. The latter had welcomed Erik the Red and his fellow Norse, or Viking, colonists from Iceland in the early 980s.
I look and listen in one direction and find two waterfalls tumbling down a 700-foot rocky slope. I look in another direction, and see the fjord itself, filled with icebergs. Many of these are "blue ice," the product of pressures found in the "mother" glaciers. Their rich and ethereal glow defies both camera and description. I look in a third direction and face the massive wall of ice that forms the great Greenland Ice Sheet; it looms like a giant cloudbank. Beside me flows a small whitewater stream, the liquid pure and cold. I cup my hands and drink deeply. A third waterfall begins a few yards downstream, falling another 200 feet to feed into the fjord.
In the warmth of an early August sun, the flora and fauna seem to step out of Edward Hicks's Peaceable Kingdom. While treeless, the landscape is green, with scrub willow and birch, blueberry plants, and a grand display of wildflowers. A few are familiar—harebells and buttercups. Most are unique to this place: pinks, purples, yellows, blues, and reds. A caribou occasionally wanders by, little concerned about my presence. Trout jump in a nearby lake. A peregrine falcon hovers overhead. At one point I look toward a rock pile about 40 feet away and spy an arctic fox sitting there, studying me. White in the winter months, his coat is now dark. After about ten minutes, his curiosity apparently satisfied, he ambles away and joins his mate up a hillock.
Searching for Erratics
I am here assisting my son, a research geologist, and a colleague of his, who are investigating the ebb and flow of the Greenland "ice margin" over the last several thousand years. What caused the advance or retreat of the ice? How did such motions relate to atmospheric temperatures and ocean salinity? What lessons do these past events hold for climate change in the early twenty-first century?
A long-missing part of the equation was accurately measuring when such transitions occurred. Geologists sometimes used the radiocarbon dating of random, decayed organic materials (trees, brush, etc.) that seemed affected by changes in glacial direction. Yet while the technique can effectively date an item, the item's relation to glacial motion is often left unclear.
We are using a relatively new approach labeled Cosmogenic Surface Exposure Dating. It has been called measuring "the sunburn on a rock." The process begins with cosmic rays: predominantly protons and alpha particles, the "stuff" left over from the Creation (or the Big Bang, as most scientists prefer) or spawned by subsequent supernovas. These emanations fill the universe and constantly bombard the earth. They pass through our frail bodies, with both tissue and particles left largely unaffected. However, physicists have discovered that when they hit the mineral quartz, these rays transform oxygen atoms into an isotope, beryllium 10. And this can be measured.
So our task combines old-fashioned, hard-rock geology with modern atomic physics. We came to this spot to find "erratics," boulders that had been torn from the bedrock by an advancing glacier and carried for great distances within the moving ice, being smoothed and rounded in the process. When the glacier retreated or melted, it dropped these boulders in a new place. We seek boulders that meet certain criteria: resting on bedrock or a well-settled glacial moraine; relatively flat on top; at least a yard above the ground; and rich in quartz content. Using hammer and chisel, we then chip off a sample of this rock, no deeper than an inch, and weighing about six pounds.
Back in the laboratory, chemical baths will extract the quartz. This material will be run through an accelerator mass spectrometer, which separates out the beryllium 10. The results will then be plugged into a formula with a dozen variables, which will in turn posit how many years ago the boulder was dropped by the glacier (give or take five percent).
Pondering Time in an Ephemeral Paradise
Again, we find ourselves in a paradise—a geologic one this time. I estimate that our plateau is about 800 acres in size. In this space, the number of erratic boulders is well into the thousands: a cornucopia of great rocks amid the flowers and blueberries. Many form part of three boulder wall moraines—my son calls them textbook examples of the phenomenon. So our work has turned out to be easy.
Allan C. Carlson is the author of numerous books, including Family Questions: Reflections on the American Social Crisis and The American Way: Family and Community in the Shaping of the American Identity. He attends St. Paul Lutheran Church in Rockford, Illinois. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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