End of the Ice Age

The Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets that covered a large part of North America reached their maximum form about 14,000 to 20,000 years ago. It could be said the initial retreat from these maximums represents the end of the Ice Age. Maybe the climatic change that caused the retreat is the proper marker for the end, but from my perspective as an artist, I feel the Ice Age is still ending, with vast amounts of ice still locked in mountain glaciers and ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.. Growing up in Main, I was alwasy fascinated by glaciers, because much of the landscape in Main had been carved by ice. Details in the landscape, such as erratic boulders littering fields and pastures, always caught my imagination but the ice was long gone. and the Ice Age was over. Then I came to Alaska to work at a fish processor in 1977. By chance I ended up in Cordova, situated on the south central coast of Alaska, almost surrounded by massive glaciers and ice fields. The glaciation along the gulf coat is supported by the Chugach and the St. Elias mountain ranges, extending from the Alaskan Peninsula in the west, to the Canada and Southeast Alaska in the east The glaciers and ice fields combined to form one of the largest areas of glaciation in the northern hemisphere, but they are just a remnant of the Cordilleran ice sheet that covered this area, as well as a lot of northwest North America. The massive ice that still exists and the history of the ice written on the glacier-carved landscape never fails to fascinate and inspire me.