Warming Trend by Karin Kallmaker

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    “None better. This is really Tonk Junior. Tonk Senior was a sled dog.”
    “I would have thought a Newfie was too big to work in harness. They’re so much larger than Huskies.”
    Ani smiled as she settled on the tarp to Tonk’s left. “They are. We weren’t a great team, but it was fun.”
    Eve sat down on Tonk’s other side. Well, no etchings in sight, and a dog this size was an effective bundling board. Tonk was unquestionably warm, panting happily, gaze riveted on the little picnic basket. “Can I give him his treat?”
    “Sure.”
    For a few moments there was just the sound of happy crunching.
    “It’s beautiful, you were right about that, too.” Eve pulled her cap down to cover her ears. The breeze blowing down from the glacier head was distinctly chill, but it lacked the true bite of winter. “I don’t know about staying out all night though.”
    “Night is technically over in about three hours.”
    “True. Okay. Until sunrise.”
    Ani spread the blanket over them and the conversation, thankfully, didn’t turn to the latest rock bands or social events in town that Eve had no time to attend, unless she was catering them. Instead, Ani talked quietly about the shimmer of light, how the sharpest reflection came from newly frozen ice, while the older, cloudier surfaces absorbed light. A walk across the glacier’s surface could touch ice that dated back six months to six centuries, to six millennia, or more. Eve’s questions were patiently answered and Ani didn’t seem to think it a non sequitur when Eve brought up the similarities of ice crystals in glacier-making to the creation of ice cream.
    After a while they had the graham sandwiches.
    “Delicious, thank you. And so simple.”
    “If I had time to be fancy I could have added a touch of Grand Marnier or just simple vanilla.” Eve rolled the dates, almonds and chocolate across the surface of her tongue one more time. The graham cracker was the perfect complement, but it was all a bit dry. It could be a recipe worth developing homemade energy bars. Surely she could make them less expensively than the ones from the grocery. She passed Ani an Aquapod. “Or a hint of orange zest.”
    “Or a bit of coffee.”
    “Oh. That could work.” She broke off a piece of graham cracker. “Is this okay for Tonk?”
    “He’s never met a food he couldn’t eat.”
    “Chocolate’s bad for dogs, though.” Tonk lifted the graham cracker from Eve’s hand with a swipe of the tongue. She mopped her fingers on her jeans.
    “He’ll eat it. He’ll eat stuff five days dead, too. And give it back to me later.”
    “Pleasant.”
    Ani ruffled Tonk’s considerable head full of fur. “Woman’s best friend.”
    “The lights are getting less pink.”
    Ani glanced at her watch. “Halfway to sunrise.”
    The whirling pulsation of the lights was mesmerizing. Green streaked toward gold, then both split to let pink and a tinge of orange flow upward. Eve asked, “Does it all make you feel small?”
    “Not really,” Ani answered. “No more than the stars. I’m filled with awe, though. Awe that what they’re made of, what this is made of” She gestured at the expanse of the glacier’s surface. “It’s what we’re made of.”
    “So if this glacier is moving at three feet a year, and it started at Mt. McKinley…a hundred miles or so?”
    “Not by the route the glacier takes, but close enough.”
    Thinking hard, Eve murmured, “Three feet a year, a hundred miles, so”
    “A hundred and seventy thousand yards from here to the terminus, give or take.”
    “So, a hundred and seventy thousand years for this patch of ice to reach here.”
    “Well not this patch. The surface of the glacier is largely static. The flow is deeper down.”
    Eve nodded. “That’s…awe-inspiring, you’re right.”
    “And if we were able to drill down the mile depth of this glacier we would find remnants of plants and animals we’ve never seen before.”
    “Is that why