Every glaciation starts with a snowflake – a spindly, ephemeral thing that by itself merely melts on a mitten. But given the proper conditions, that crystalline masterpiece will be compressed and transformed, merging with trillions of others to move mountains, carve valleys, and shape continents through a winter that spans millennia. Its original shape unrecognizable, that snowflake will remain locked away for an epoch before being released in a torrent back to a landscape that has forever changed.
In our little notch, nestled at the foot of the northern Green Mountains, winter feels like a miniature ice age. Snow arrives early, piles up deep, and lingers late into spring – advancing and retreating on a scale of months rather than centuries. To the north of our cabin, the Woodbury Range rises abruptly, looming 800 feet above the valley bottom. To the south, a steep, undulating ridge shrouds us in darkness through most of the winter months. Mountain air sinks and pools in these cold, dark hollows, where frozen creeks, fens, and ponds meander through spruce-fir forests.
For the few full-time residents here, winter is serious business, and preparations for next year begin almost as soon as the snow recedes. During our first full year off grid, my partner and I have become increasingly in tune with the local phenology as it governs day-to-day life. In late March, while spring is well underway at lower elevations, we’re just reaching peak snowpack. On the 2023 vernal equinox, our stake reads 40 inches – the “glacial maximum” for that year. During these waning days of winter, we glide through the woods on skis, unencumbered by downed trees or boulders, the understory buried beneath us.
At the end of the last glaciation, a river rushed through this valley, cascading from dying ice sheets and emptying into a lake that covered much of Vermont. For a brief period each spring, that river returns as meltwater, resurrecting waterfalls and breaching beaver dams.
What follows is a brief, riotous interlude of warmth: four frost-free months of sounds and smells and colors. Life springs from every crack and crevice. It seems impossible that within just a few short months the silence and stillness of winter will return.
But by late October, as the larches turn gold, the sun does not crest the ridge until 9:30 a.m., and the long, cold dark is approaching. On a frosty morning, we move our seasoned wood into the shed, each log coming to rest with a satisfying clink that echoes off the cliffs. A snowflake lands on my jacket, and I stop and grin, admiring its fragility for a moment before it melts. These first stray flakes of the season are a special thing, although they may amount to only a dusting and melt in a matter of hours – not even long enough to bend the goldenrod stems.
Still, it’s enough to ignite my excitement for the season to come, and I wake the next morning thinking boreal thoughts. I head for the nearest mountaintop, ascending the steep, winding trail up through the spruces where the snow still clings to bent boughs, getting deeper the higher I climb. Above tree line the world is in grayscale, every surface coated in rime ice. I settle down with a thermos of tea in the foggy, krummholz dreamscape.
I imagine sitting on this mountaintop for 300,000 years watching the glaciers advance, witnessing the first dusting of snow collecting in the cirques and valleys, burying boulders, blanketing the slopes. A series of wet winters and cool summers would prevent the snow from melting entirely. Relict snowbanks would remain year-round as icy slush called firn. More snowy winters would continue to pile on, and the snowpack becomes more resilient with each new storm. As decades pass, firn would be compressed into ice, shifting and groaning under its own weight – a viscous fluid scouring the mountainsides. Centuries pass and it merges with other mountain glaciers to engulf the continent, advancing all around my mountain perch.
As I descend, I imagine the glaciers retreating – an ice age coming to an end. I hop from rock to rock across the felsenmeer barrens, traveling forward in geologic time as I go. I watch the snow and ice melt as lichens eat away at the boulders, forming pockets of soil in the talus slopes. Bryophytes take hold, and arctic plants poke up through the snow. The first trees emerge: crooked, stunted krummholz exposed to the wind and ice, confined to thin soils. The footing is a little easier now, the trail a little less steep, and I begin to run.
I speed through the montane forest, hurtling through deep time, surrounded by a circumboreal assemblage of species. The sweet, acidic aroma of sphagnum and conifer needles permeates the air. The snow melting off in the afternoon sun causes creeks and rivulets to form in the trail, headed downstream to join the rising rivers. Hardwoods begin to appear among the spruces, and I’m approaching the end of the ice age. My stride opens and I’m grinning and laughing the whole way.
A startled hiker – the first other human I’ve seen that day – brings me back into the present as I bound down the slick, rocky trail. Within an hour I am back at the trailhead in shorts and a T-shirt, late-autumn leaves still clinging to the trees. I sit awhile watching the bumblebees forage on the asters and goldenrods, in stark contrast to the frozen, windswept ridgeline where I have just been. I have experienced all four seasons within a matter of hours. Satisfied by my snowy adventure, I’m content to return to our valley and wait for winter to arrive in earnest.
November brings more frosty mountain ridges in the morning alpenglow. The thin snow cover in early winter seems to amplify every contour on the landscape. Old logging roads, stone walls, and cellar holes emerge; cliffs and outcrops become more defined. Each snowfall lasts a little longer as the ground freezes and the nights stay cold. December brings several major storms of wet, heavy, cement-like snow, and within weeks we are at near-record snowpack. The contours of the hillsides are hidden, and the Woodbury Range is a rolling, white expanse. My neighbor Jon is skiing cliffs where he has not dared to venture for decades.
A thaw arrives in mid-December, bringing an early end to our “glacial maximum.” I am awakened by snow slumping off the roof and steady drips accelerating through the night. Dense fog has moved in by morning, as warm humid air meets the cold valley bottom. We remain socked in for days, as gentle rain erodes the deep, resilient snowpack. On the afternoon of December 18 the sprinkles become a downpour, and temperatures soar to almost 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Nearly three inches of rain falls, and the remaining two feet of saturated snow begins to melt.
From the safety of our cabin, I watch helplessly as a megaflood of glacial proportions fills the ancient riverbed. Ice and debris rage into the headwaters of the Winooski River. Downstream, it rips up roads, inundates homes, and shutters businesses still recovering from the last major flood just months before. Waterfalls erupt from the cliffs overhead, and seasonal creeks swell. Suddenly the roar is deafening. The proglacial river of the late Pleistocene returns, sweeping through the alder swamp, chunks of ice scouring the banks, willows and alders snapping in half.
Again, I feel as if I’m hurtling forward in time through the end of a glaciation, only this time I’m not laughing. Something terrifying has been set into motion as eight billion social primates merge to move mountains, reshape rivers, and define an epoch. We’ve entered uncharted territory where seasons change within hours and an ice age ends in a day. Events that once transpired on the scale of geologic time are now occurring within a human lifespan – and my dreams and nightmares have become reality. In between the moments of despair, there are instants of beauty and awe as we witness something that no one has ever seen before.
