father's day

...we come from the land of the ice and snow

Gliding above the glaciers in the seaplane, a new perspective. They’d seen a glacier calve the day before in the impossibly blue ice. It’s not really blue, he told her, it’s just a reflection. When it cracked, a giant groan. She’d been so cold this trip. Must be all that time in the desert, he’d chuckled, my daughter in a landlocked state! He, in his windbreaker, defying the elements, defying every single one of his seventy-four years, defying everything, everyone.

And as they ascended, everything white and sharp, all the hard edges between them softened, like the clouds surrounding them.

My father and I in Alaska, June, 2006