Kate Pond, Sculptor



OUR CHANGING SEA

Just as our lives change, so has our landscape.

For 100,000 years an Ice Age glacier slowly scraped a depression between the Adirondack and Green Mountains. As the climate warmed, about 12,000 years ago, the retreating ice sheet uncovered a low basin, giving us a fresh water lake, "Lake Vermont".

About 11,000 years ago, further retreat of the ice allowed seawater to enter the basin from the St. Lawrence, forming the "Champlain Sea".

Whales swam the new sea; and clams, mussels and other mollusks provided food for early Americans encamped along the emerging shores. Eventually, around 8,000 years ago, the basin, which had been depressed below sea level by the weight of the ice sheet, rose to an elevation above sea level. Salt water was replaced by fresh water and our "Lake Champlain" settled into place. Such shifts have brought us all here.