Excerpt from The Workshop and the World by Robert P. Crease, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Moreau and I watched a cable car unload a new cluster of visitors. Each year, the glacier's continued melt means the ice cave has to be recut in a new spot, farther from the cable- car stop, and the ramps to it from the cable- car stop extended. Eventually, adding ramps will not make sense, and plans are being drawn up for a new cable car. I asked Moreau how much longer such fixes could go on. "I don't know," he said.

We were standing at the bottom of the half- mile- wide valley. We could even hear the glacier melt, as droplets falling from the cave roof splattered on the floor below. Outside, the desolate basin was mostly quiet and still. But every few minutes, we heard a strange creaking and cracking in the distance as a boulder broke loose and tumbled down the valley walls, knocking into and dislodging other rocks, each leaving behind a comet- trail of dust until everything came to rest on the glacier. It was a disturbing experience. It felt like the world was falling apart.

Reprinted from The Workshop and the World. Copyright © 2019 by Robert P. Crease. Used with permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.