Old Man Appalachian

Have you ever heard someone say the Appalachian Mountains aren't real mountains because they aren't really that big?  

There's a radiant and rugged yet peaceful, old, and tired charm to the Appalachian Mountains.  I've often been quoted as telling people it is my favorite little old man... Once a towering series of peaks that defined a supercontinent, standing proud and so resilient that nothing – not weather, not an eternity of time – could ever diminish these most formidable peaks. Yet now… epochs later… now those majestic peaks are relegated to a mere shadow of what they were.  How small am I? How inconsequential do I feel when I walk with that little old man and see his life so clearly brandished around me? Let your mind wander and take a walk with me down one of my favorite trails… let me tell you about the old man I see contrasted by the colossal and invincible man that I know he was.

Walking down the trail, I come to a brook that dances with boulders as it rushes to meet the river in the gorge below.  The boulders, some seem small compared to the neighboring house-sized ones, draw my gaze. They are remnants of something larger than my comprehension… goliaths that have fallen, coming to rest in the gulch hollowed out by the same brook they now cavort with. How high were they before?  I can’t even fathom the size this ridge must have been.

I walk further, trekking to a section where the river – and now the trail – have exposed a wall of rock that likely contributed to some of the boulders in the river nearby.  I stop and gaze to the top, marveling first at the trees and vines that grow ostensibly from the rock itself.  I marvel at how life takes hold and grows so stubbornly from the very smallest embrace with a crevice.  As the aura of wonder fades surrounding the flora growing so precariously above, I see the bluff as more… once connecting the two sides of the valley where the river runs through.  It is here… here where I am compelled to close my eyes and see what the mind can even if the eyes don’t. 

It was almost 500 million years ago… in a time we now call the Paleozoic Era.  There was nothing but a hint of what would become North America… and that hint was the tip of my Aps.   The Aps were bound to be epic… they were the very first Paleozoic mountain building event and, when plates collided and the North American plate won… the subduction of the oceanic plate helped heave the Aps upward. The Aps continued to strive upward over the next 250 million years. Continent after oceanic continent collided and joined with the North American plate as a behemoth continent called Pangea took shape.  The collision pushed the Aps further (and also formed the Ozarks and other westward-lying ranges).  Over the next few hundred million years, the Aps were worn down by the untold power of water… eroding the once World Heavy-Weight Champion down to a 90-pound, fragile, broken old man.  The story is ancient – more ancient than we can feasibly grasp… yet his story is all around us. 

The next time you’re walking – on any trail in the Aps – listen to the weathered, aged, and beaten old man’s story, look at his past… it’s an amazing past, indeed.  Then, the next time you marvel at Everest or gaze in wonder at the Alps... remember what the little old man taught you: There is nothing that time cannot age and we - the specs of humanity - will never understand the true passage of time of our planet. 

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Stephanne Dennis is an outdoor enthusiast extraordinaire. A highly skilled backpacker and apex predator specialist, she shares her love of the outdoors with her unrivaled writing skills and her faithful companion, Bandit McKaye, her Anatolian Shepherd. She is currently studying Wildlife Biology at Oregon State University and dedicates her time and skills to the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Foundation.