Chapter 1

The first quote that stood out to me in Mountains of the Heart by Scott Weidensaul was “Rocks are fundamental to the Appalachians, but unless you are a geologist or a weekend rock hound, you’re unlikely to spend much time thinking about them.”  This statement, in the book, stood out because here in Florida there’s grass, sand, and shell. We don’t have mountains with rocky cliffs, which also means we don’t have granite. I grew up in Massachusetts and we went camping all the time up in the White Mountains in a little town called North Conway, New Hampshire. We would stay along one of the best rivers the mountain had. The rivers there are nothing like Florida’s rivers.  There was much coarser sand and no shells on the edges of the river or under the water. It was all stones, stones of all different sizes. Some were so big we couldn’t lift them and others were perfect for skipping across the crystal clear water. The one thing they all had in common was there smooth surface and the layers you could see in them. This quote really invoked a personal response for me, the rocks are so different from Florida’s sharp shells.

The second quote that stood out to me has less of an emotional/personal effect and more of WOW factor to me.  “The rock underlying the pool-and the waterfall-is actually younger by 500 million years than the Gneiss above it.” (Weidensaul). This statement stood out to me because rarely do people really think about how old the earth is and I think it is truly amazing. To think about how long it took for the stone we have in our kitchens to form is also astonishing. Although it says that the rock under the pool is 500 million years younger than the gneiss, it is still amazingly old. To say that something is much younger but it is still a half of a billion years old it just mind blowing to me.

The third quote is more of a science related quote to me. “The story of the ice ages is the story of cycles within cycles.” (Weidensaul). This is a very interesting statement because it makes you think about how dynamic the earth really is. There are cycles that we don’t even think about that take place.

https://utahtransplant.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/trip-notes-part-3-northern-leg/

Weidensaul, S. (2016). Mountains of the Heart: A Natural History of the Appalachians. Golden: Fulcrum Publishing.