The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [431]
Mountain cirques were not the only birthplaces. Glaciers formed on level ground, too, and once they covered a large enough area, the chilling effect spread the precipitation out of the anticyclone funnel, centered in the middle, to the extreme margins; the thickness of the ice remained nearly the same throughout.
Glaciers were never entirely dry. Some water was always seeping down from the melting caused by pressure. It filled in small cracks and crannies, and when it chilled and refroze, it expanded in all directions. The motion of a glacier was outward in all directions from its origin, and the speed of its motion depended on the slope of its surface, not on the slope of the ground underneath. If the surface slope was great, the water within the glacier flowed downhill faster through the chinks in the ice and spread out the ice as it refroze. They grew faster when they were young, near large oceans or seas, or in mountains where the high peaks assured heavy snowfall. They slowed down after they spread out, their broad surface reflecting the sunlight away and the air above the center turning colder and drier with less snow.
The glaciers in the mountains to the south had spread out from their high peaks, filled the valleys to the level of high mountain passes, and spilled through them. During an earlier advancing period, the mountain glaciers filled the deep trench of a fault line separating the mountain foreland and the ancient massif. It covered the highland, then spread across to the old eroded mountains on the northern fringe. The ice receded during the temporary warming—which was coming to an end—and melted in the lowland fault valley, creating a large river and a long, moraine-dammed lake, but the plateau glacier on the highland they were crossing stayed frozen.
They could not build a fire directly on the ice and had planned to use the bowl boat as a base for the river stones they had brought to build the fire on. But first they had to empty all the burning stones out of the round craft. As Ayla picked up the heavy mammoth hide, it occurred to her that they could just as well use it as a base upon which to build a fire. Even if it scorched a little, it wouldn’t matter. It pleased her that she had thought to bring it. Everyone, including the horses, had water and a little food.
While they were stopped, the sun disappeared entirely behind heavy clouds, and before they started on their way again, thick snow began falling with grim determination. The north wind howled across the icy expanse; there was nothing on the whole vast sheet covering the massif to stand in its way. A blizzard was in the making.
42
As the snowfall thickened, the force of the wind from the northwest suddenly increased. It slammed into them with a blast of cold air that shoved them along as though they were no more than an insignificant piece of the horizontal curtain of white that surrounded them.
“I think we’d better wait this out,” Jondalar shouted to be heard above the howl.
They fought to set up their tent while the icy blasts seized the small shelter, tore the stakes out of the ice, and left the tent billowing and flapping. The violent, sinewy wind threatened to rip the sheet of leather from the grasp of the two puny living souls trying to make their way across the ice, daring to present an obstacle to the furious, snow-choked blizzard raging across the flat surface.
“How are we going to keep the tent down?” Ayla asked. “Is it always this bad up here?”
“I don’t remember it blowing this hard before, but I’m not surprised.”
The horses were standing mutely, their heads down, stoically enduring the storm. Wolf was close beside them, digging out a hole for himself. “Maybe we could get one of the horses to stand on the loose end and hold it down until we get it staked,” Ayla suggested.
With one thing leading to another, they came up with a makeshift solution, using the horses as both stakes and tent supports.