'Maybe It Will Destroy Everything': Pakistan's Melting Glaciers Cause Alarm

"For generations, farmers in the Harchi Valley in Pakistan's highlands enjoyed a close relationship with their glacier that snakes between two mountain peaks. It watered their fields, orchards and grazing lands."

"Following local tradition, it has a name — Ultar — and a gender — male, because it is black, owing to the debris that covers it (female glaciers are white, residents say)."

"Now, their relationship is unraveling as pollution and global warming cause the Ultar glacier to melt and form unstable lakes that could burst their icy banks at any moment. Already this summer, much of Harchi's lands were destroyed in glacial floods."

"Shamim Banno, a 55-year-old farmer, was working her potato fields when a flood rushed by. Tremors jiggled the ground. Car-size boulders tumbled down the nearby waterfall and smashed into the river below. The water rose and she clung to a tree, shouting for her son, who was recording the flood on his smartphone, mesmerized."