The rapid vegetation change following the glaciers' speedy retreat has enabled us to map and photograph the course of plant succession. Glaciers was published in 1840. Here, in the aftermath of retreating glaciers, Muir found original nature, a landscape like a thought not yet formed. It was like seeing an owl with no feathers. A trip up bay mimics glacial retreat and rolls back plant succession, from the mature forest at Bartlett Cove to the naked Earth structure at the fjords' farthest reaches.
Biological succession produces profound change here in a mere decade.
Earnest, long-range studies of plant succession began in Glacier Bay in 1916, with the work of Professor William S. Cooper. His plant studies were continued in 1941 by Professor Donald Lawrence and others. Moss will begin to add more conspicuous tufts. Next come scouring rush and fireweed, dryas, alder, willows, then spruce, and finally hemlock forest. Where plants' seeds happen to land, of course, can be critical.