Today, the Ottauquechee bore away traces of hundreds of millions of years of rock formation and decay. Every day, the stream carries on this task, delivering sediments, grains of sand and dissolved minerals to the Connecticut, then to the Long Island Sound, where between the coasts, layers of sand and mud accrete. Geologists tell us these in their turn are destined to harden into rock, then be lifted up or crushed or melted, or all of the above, by brute tectonic force to become, somewhere, some day, a new Himalaya, before once again eroding down to next to nothing..
I have been trying to understand the roots of the land beneath this river. From its source to its outflow, the waters touch the remains of continents with names that Tolkien would have embraced. The Earth has so shuffled, cooked, crushed, melted, pushed and frozen the rock beneath our feet that every detailed explanation seems to end with a variation of the statement, "Of course, it is more complicated than this."
No comments:
Post a Comment