Q. Are glaciers on the move—and, if so, how fast?

A. They certainly are, but at highly variant speeds. You can’t see them move at all in

Greenland; you can’t even tell if they’re coming or going. Actually, they are moving above a  
millimeter a day in the east and sliding back the same in the west, all of which is very hard on 
the upper peninsula, especially the crust. Underneath, where all the fairies live, there’s no 
stress at all. On the other side of the Arctic Circle, though, in Faintheart, Alaska—on the cove, 
where the fishing colony keeps re-establishing its tiny village every twenty-three days—the 
saying is, “Here she comes again!” Nowadays, they have snowmobiles and can make quick 
getaways, but in the old days it was almost perilous. Why, incidentally, glaciers are female I 
don’t know, since there is no gender in that Esquimo dialect. It just gains something in 
translation, I guess.

The Caribou

Professor:      "I am here on the North Slope recording a bilingual caribou, who speaks a unique Eskimo dialect . . . Will you illustrate, please?"

Caribou:         "drzlyfumnpxksrccbggujalkr”

Professor:      "Meaning?"

Caribou:         “One o’clock”

Professor:      "May we have another example?"

Caribou:         “gxh.”

Professor:      "Translated how?"

Caribou:         “The place where two oceans meet in a bay that goes inland through a purple fjord that turns pale and then not so pale and goes on and on, in and out and then narrows somewhere but floods in May and maybe part of June.”

Professor:      "Any other expression, not so nuanced, that we may be interested in?"

Caribou:         “landscapeintruisionsinthenameofcivilizationalloverthespillspoiledplace

                        bypropernounsexxonandbritishpetroleumforimproperpurposes.”

Professor:      "We can almost decipher that."

Caribou:        " In plainer English: 'Men come now and dig dig and pump pump and lay down big pipe and seep and soak the land with poison, and may they go to blazes without taking us with them.'”

Professor:      "Thank you very much."

Caribou:         "You are not welcome."

            
Moral: Enough said.