Quote

Plate tectonics is not all havoc and destruction. The slow movement of continents and ocean floors recycles carbon dioxide dissolved in the oceans back into the atmosphere. Without this slow speed carbon cycle, Earth's temperatures would cool dozens of degrees below your comfort zone.

Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.

In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.

The earth's crust has not yet stopped heaving and plunging under our feet. Mountain ranges are still being thrust up on the horizon. Granites are still growing under the continental masses. Nor has the organic world ceased to produce new buds at the tips of its countless branches.

All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

The mountains seem to have conquered us long before we set foot on them, and they will remain long after our brief existence. This indomitable force of the mountains gives us humans a blank canvas on which to paint the drive of discovery and, in the process, test the limits of human performance.

But the revolutions and changes which are responsible for the present state of the earth are not limited to the upsetting of the ancient strata and to the ebbing of the sea after the formations of new layers.

The mountains are a demanding, cold place, and they don't allow for mistakes.

Unfortunately, we haven't found many very old rocks on Earth because our planet's surface is constantly renewed by plate tectonics, coupled with erosion.

A mountain is composed of tiny grains of earth. The ocean is made up of tiny drops of water. Even so, life is but an endless series of little details, actions, speeches, and thoughts. And the consequences whether good or bad of even the least of them are far-reaching.