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Summertime in the BelgradesContentsfor Printing Article Summaries |
Thin Ice: From Great Pond to Global Perspective
"A lot of my interest in the environment is due to growing up on Great Pond," describes local author Mark Bowen, whose extraordinary book Thin Ice was published in October 2005. "I wrote a lot of the book while I was on Great Pond." Thin Ice is the account of Bowen's exceptional experience as a writer accompanying explorer/climatologist Lonnie Thompson on record-breaking expeditions to equatorial "death zones" (above 18,000 feet mountain glaciers) where Thompson's crew retrieved ice cores as a key to understanding global climate change. An avid and experienced climber himself, Bowen accepted a magazine assignment in 1997 to go to the summit of Nevado Sajama, the highest mountain in Bolivia, to write a story about drilling the ice cores and about the unique plan (which subsequently didn't work) to float them by hot air balloon from the summit to a freezer at the mountain's base. 
Bowen brought home the assignment story, but more importantly a message about global warming, and about the driving impact of tropical heat on climate change. Following additional glacier expeditions with Thompson, interviews with other experts, and drawing on his own scientific background (a Ph.D. in physics from MIT), Bowen wrote Thin Ice. "Global warming may seem distant but it's not," states Bowen, pointing out that the mountaineering community, who climb all over the world, are witnessing firsthand the retreating of glaciers. In regard to the local environmental picture, Bowen advises, "Saving your little lake in Maine leads to a much bigger view. It's a piece of a whole puzzle." That puzzle is excellently explained in Thin Ice. Mark Bowen is a fourth-generation summer resident of Belgrade. He lives in Cambridge, MA. To read reviews of his book and see photographs from his expeditions, visit www.mark-bowen.com. | ||