Moulin

A verticle shaft in a glacier, kept open by falling water, is a, moulin.I suppose the size of the shaft and the ammount of water drilling through the ice, though signifiagant, does not have defining prematers; a moulin could be a small stream and a small hole or it could be a river plunging down through a tunnel size cavern all the way to the bedrock.
Many of the reserchers that departed Kangerlussuaq almost a month ago, are now returning. We sit with some of them around the diner table, or stirke up long conversations in the hall. Sometimes, we are the first to see their most recent presentations. Jason Box, from the Byrd polar research Institue, a member of the, Extrmeme Ice Survey, a team captruing the speed of glaciers through time lapse photography, kept our attention piqued well up untill midnight last night. Through his dedication to capturing some of the most important glaciers in western Greenland, through the lenses of cameras mounted in fixed weatherproof boxes kept charged by solar panels, and his ease of communicating the drama of science to lay people, we learn perhaps too much, too quickly, and still, not enough.
I face dispare and also sadness as I watch a Niagra Falls ammount of water pour down into a hole "you could drive buses into" in the ice cap. Most likely it reaches the bedrock. There are theories that these moulins could be draining 2 miles down onto the basal layer of the island, over which the ice sheet rests, thus lubricating the bottom of the ice sheet causing it to flow faster than normal. Indeed, the time lapse photography compared with satleite telemetry and ground truthing, have proven that glaciers are traveling faster. Simple observations form tide line, show them to be retreating further.
But this is alarming, for now the global consortium of scientists are begining to feel cetainites. Certanties that not only may they have predicted the sea level rise to be less than it may actualy become, but that the climate too will change much more radicly and rapidly than first presumed. All nations across the globe need to agree to some sort of KYOTO protocol.
Still, all things are constanlty changing, and I am relieved from a circiling depression, like vultures, flying around a dieing beast, to a smiling wonder; a sudden, expanding, almost euphoric peace, for there is more knowledge being assinmliated throughout the world today then ever before in the history of the human race, and there is also, or so i bleive, more hope, more awarneess, more we can do.
By simply istening to and observing, any one of the dozens of reserachers we help to support, there comes though a presence of fearless comapssion. A final relinquishing of acceptance into the understanding of the total inter-connectedness of all beings; wether it be a glacier and a rock or a person and a honey bee.
As the earth exhales, we inhale. As we exhale, the earth inhales. As we learn to sit for longer and longer spans of time, in the quiet, silent, places, we learn how to watch a flower open, or an ice sheet move, or a landscape brighten with day. We learn that these places begin in our minds and expand into our hearts, then retract again into our mind; what does it mean to us, this flower this glacier, this cloud cover, clearing?
To some, they mean so much that they devout a life time of studying to just one tiny aspect of life. To the rest of us, we must smile that we are rleived of that duty for this time, so that we may embrace all that is around us, wherever we are, whatever we are doing, for like glaciers, we are moving faster and faster and yet, we are also, retreating.