Mountain formation Ecology Distant blue Commentary

Eduard Suess geophysics

Mountain formation

• An aspiration, a mystery—
• the high mountains
• the mountains ranges
• implied great movements
• of the continents.
• Eduard Suess lined up the mountains
• according to their ages
• and was the first to consider a belt of mountains as a whole
• proposed that a supercontinent in the southern hemisphere
• connected ranges that spanned South America,
• Africa, India, Australia, and Antarctica,
• but because a mechanism for moving continents
• had not been discovered
• Seuss thought that the land sunk into the oceans between them.

Ecology

• We began to consider our planet as a whole
• and saw that changes had been wrought
• upon the face of the earth
• of dramatic and permanent effect
• upon which all life depends
• and began to connect the causes and effects.

Distant blue

• Were a thing so big
• and far enough away
• for us to see it as a whole
• comprehending its beauty
• in the blue distance
• in its immensity
• then we might see
• it effects us not from esthetic balance
• like a work of art,
• for it doesn’t need balance,
• but because its size is incomprehensible
• and remains incomprehensible for centuries.