Song of the Glacier: 124 years ago a small part of the world was saved for us all

[SorellaLaBefana]

124 years ago today, President William McKinley signed into law a bill creating Mount Rainier National Park, the fifth in the nation, in order to protect what John Muir described as some of the finest alpine meadows he ever saw...

Ninety-seven percent of the park is preserved as wilderness under the National Wilderness Preservation System as Mount Rainier Wilderness, a designation it received in 1988. The name of the mountain itself in Lushootseed is “Tacoma”, the same as a nearby city...

The trip to Mount Rainier had played a role in reinvigorating Muir and convincing him to rededicate his life to the preservation of nature as national parks. At the time national forests, called forest reserves at first, were being created throughout the American West, under the utilitarian “conservation-through-use” view of Gifford Pinchot. Muir came to be known as a “preservationist”. He wanted nature preserved under the more protected status of national parks...

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/events070302/

When my mother and I moved to Seattle, Mt Rain was one of the first places we visited. On every weekend possible we camped at Sunrise Center to the northeast of the mountain.

On the first such weekend we had arrived late on a Friday in the not unusual Northwest summer drizzle which obscured everything from sight.

We were having supper in our somewhat rain-dampened tent when we became aware of strange and very loud groaning sounds coming from the direction of the unseen mountain. The sounds were infrequent—most times groans, occasionally a rumbling roar and even a loud snap. We ruled out the possibility of a pride of lions roaming about but had no idea of what the cause was.

Around midnight the clouds vanished. We could see the mountain clearly bathed in moonlight. Gazing at this wonderous sight we heard the groans again, then suddenly heard a roar and saw a small avalanche pour over a cliff.

The rest of the mystery was solved when we realized the groans, and occasional snaps, came from Emmons Glacier as it responded to the summer melt.