The mountains are calling …

How did this get here?

“The mountains are calling, and I must go,” John Muir wrote in a letter to his sister, Sarah.

There is a ridgeline a few miles from my home that appears to be a naturally created rock wall. The ridge was created from the eastern U.S. crashing into Scotland thousands of years ago. In some places, one can see the layers folded like a carpet laid flat, then pushed at the edge until it curls into several folds, lain over each other.

[pullquote]In the duff, or between tree branches, barely caught from the corner of my eye, a spider weaves a snare, proving to errant flies and other unaware winged creatures that the seemingly shortest way from A to B is not always the best way.[/pullquote]Atop the folds, in places that have not yet been reshaped by residential development, humungous rocks stand exposed, as though someone had come along with a giant blower and sandblasted around them so they stood free to make later humans wonder how that happened.

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On tearing down mountains and other barriers

Even parts of mountains show effects of Pangea(First published in the Gettysburg Times, 6/7/2013)

A college sociology professor told me the length of human experience is about 50 years. Any longer than that is “the way it’s always been.”

One might argue human experience has been shortening in recent years; we can hear that concept illustrated on the evening news nearly every night, as the latest storm or political catastrophe is declared the worst since time began. Consider that four Americans died in an attack on Benghazi, making it “one of the worst incidents that I can recall,” according former Vice President Dick Cheney. Continue reading On tearing down mountains and other barriers