Summary

In Chapter 11 "Meltwater," MacFarlane travels with Matt and their group of friends to the Knud Rasmussen Glacier in Greenland, ice so vast it creates its own weather. MacFarlane descends into a moulin. Although it is foggy when they arrive, they can hear and feel the glacier. They reach the glacier through fjords and peaks and pass the remnants of an abandoned American Cold War base. Thousands of oil drums, the rusted skeleton of hangar, a snow plow and other debris litters the tundra. They camp below the calving face of the glacier, where the sound is intense. MacFarlane explains that the glacier is named after the underworld in Norse mythology, Helheim or 'the realm of hell' (375).

Near the calving face, they watch a bus-sized block of ice tumble into the sea, pulling smaller blocks of ice with it. The calving event creates a forty...