Inlet Ice and Mud Flats; March 27, 2017
The slow arrival of Spring has left a vast field of frozen jagged hummocks to rise and fall with the great tides in the Inlet along the highway between Anchorage and Alyeska. The hummocks and boat-sized mounds of frozen mud - really glacier river silt - form fantastic mini-landscapes through which tides come and go at a fast clip. Miniature cliffs and tidal flats intrigue viewers. There is a surprising absence of life - apart from occasional ravens or eagles that fly over, en route to some other destination. No birds visit the flats this time of year. But imagination runs wild studying the scene, half expecting small figures and animals, in scale with the features, to walk along the shores, stand on the headlands, go to the water's edge.
On the tidal shore, ice sheets fracture into plates, jammed against the mounds, hummocks, and tidal reaches.
Dramatic features, as precise and detailed as a rocky headland, are really only six feet high.
Stranded bergs of mud and ice populate the flats at low tide, like a model solar system with mis-shapen planets.
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After a lifetime of mainly expressing myself with words, my postings here will mainly rely on images. They will speak for themselves to some extent, but I'll usually add a few comments of explanation. I've taken photographs for decades, since the 1950's, inspired in part by my father's photographic skill. Four years of photo assignments and quality darkroom time eventually gave way to decades of casual and family picture-taking. I re-immersed myself when I left film and turned to digital.