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Sometimes it’s not the moutains that get you, it’s the smaller hills and valleys surrounding them because there are actually people and roads there.
Sometimes if you make a wrong turn in Pittsburgh, you are not just going the wrong direction but are also at the wrong elevation or on the wrong layer, and there’s no looping around the block to get back to where you started.
Disclaimer: This thread led me to read the Wikipedia article about Appalachia. Some definitions of the region do not include Pittsburgh or even parts of Pennsylvania, but at the same time there’s a photo of downtown Pittsburgh at the top of the article, so I went with it.
The real difference between them is the trees.
I live in Idaho. And I’ve heard if you flattened out all the mountains in Idaho. The resulting area would take up an space the size of Texas.
Nice to see a fellow Idahoan on Lemmy. Also, we should never do that lest we get another Ted Cruz.
You are safe. He is originally from Alberta, “Canada’s Texas.” He can’t handle the cold.
The Appalachians have been mountains longer than North America has been a continent
And the white man brought inbreeding to those hallowed peaks and expects it to be celebrated
Deliverance wasn’t a celebration of culture.
They’re the bones of the world dawg. It’s why there’s so much spooky scary shit here (I live in Appalachia.)
Not just the bones of the world, they’re older than bones.
Older than trees.
Older than bones.
Drones from land masses that don’t exist anymore.
There are Appalachian mountains with coal seams and those are the younger ones, because they formed in some places before the land biomass that made coal and oil existed.
They contain layers of fossils from ancient whales back to small crustaceans.
480 million years ago trilobites were being heft out of the sea by the Appalachians.
The Appalachians existed for 20 million years before bearing witness to a million year long meteor shower from the L-chondrite debris, and witnessed the earth with rings of comet orbiting for eons.
This is th e best comment I’ve read on lemmy for a long time. Fascinating info and well written. Thanks for taking the time.
They’re older than Saturn’s rings
So are sharks.
To the extent that a portion of the mountain chain that formed the Appalachian Mountains is in Europe. The Appalachians were a part of the Central Pangean mountain system, which makes them older than the Atlantic Ocean.
They’ve seen some shit.
And through it all, the mountains can all agree…trump is the biggest piece of shit they’ve ever heard of.
That’s kind of awesome to think about.
I’m picturing myself on Pangea. The mountains in front of me are taller than the Himalayas today. These are the Appalachians. Oh no, a dinosaur! Look out, duck! Huh, that’s not a duck that’s a QUETZALCOATLUS! Everybody run! How can we outrun a QUETZALCOATLUS?!?!?! AAAHHHHHH.
Isn’t it beautiful?
Wikipedia says they date back 480 million years, during the Ordovician period. I think the atmosphere would have been pretty breathable, but plants wouldn’t conquer the land in a serious way for at least another 60 million years or so, with bugs following them. Nothing saw those mountains. If you time-traveled to the Pangean mountains, you would be the only being to ever observe them in their formative years. Eons would pass before the first plant set root at their feet. The sterile and desolate emptiness would be beyond human experience.
The couple of people who’ve been on the moon have seen that kind of emptiness
I think the atmosphere would have been pretty breathable
HELLA breathable bruh…
Did you just snap a pic in your uni’s hallway
Wdym?
You don’t keep a correlated history of earth at your desk? What do you do if you forget which stage is the latest stage of the upper Devonian, Frasnian or Famennian?
That’s intense. Must feel good when you get to whip it out
WTH? There’s no ham radio bands on that glossy desk side chart!
but plants wouldn’t conquer the land in a serious way for at least another 60 million years or so
…
Eons would pass before the first plant set root at their feet.Pretty sure the mountains will still be there. Spoiler alert. I started at the end of the book.
you would be the only being to ever observe them in their formative years.
…
The sterile and desolate emptiness would be beyond human experience.That’s badass though. Except that we might be returning to that sterile and desolate emptiness here shortly.
Also, don’t forget that fungi, algae, and lichen colonized dry land before the plants arrived, paving the way for them by eating rocks and pooping dirt.
And as old as that is, sharks are older than the mountains.
Sharks are older than the North Star. Not as in Polaris wasn’t pointing north yet when the sharks evolved, but as in it hadn’t formed yet.
And prominence of many is still impressive. And there’s Mount Washington, where it’s so crazy you can’t predict the weather 15 minutes out.
We get it, people from the west coast, you’re better than us, we fucking get it.
Y’all can find something else to jack off about now.
You’d think if it were true they wouldn’t spend so much time trying to prove it. They doth protest too much
Right?
It legitimately just leaves a bad taste in my mouth regarding the west coast and particularly California
And I don’t want to feel like that! Like I know those places are cool and have beautiful natural settings and intelligent people and awesome culture.
You don’t have to trash talk the entire other half of the country to convince me that you guys have merit.
It’s low-key what someone with incredibly low self esteem does.
I think it’s similar to how the US as a whole is. We’re a young country so we felt we had to prove ourselves for a long time, but eventually everyone got the message and we held prestige, but we were still insecure and bragging which wound up making us look worse.
Within the country, the west coast had a similar experience. California had to prove it’s worth against established and respected places like Philadelphia and New York. But we all get it now. Everyone knows it’s awesome out here, and the Eastern prestige largely just remains in the coastal cities, and it’s not like people are moving to Hartford to make it big anymore. And it feels like rubbing it in when you’ve got places like the Rust Belt that continue to struggle.
Hey, while you might not win on education, healthcare, quality of life or cultural attitudes towards racism, you can always come at the west coast over this BS:
“It’S tHe IcE tHaTs ThE pRoBlEm” sure, and the fact there’s eight whole plows in the entire state and nobody even understands the concept of winter tires is just totally unrelated…
(/j ❤️)
Seattle, just the city limits of Seattle, has hills taller than things I’ve heard people in the midwest call mountains.
That being said, yeah, you are absolutely correct that almost fucking nobody in the PNW knows jack shit about driving in the snow.
They also know jack shit about driving in the rain, which is… baffling for hopefully obvious reasons.
Yeah the elevation makes driving in snow scary. People in the PNW also can’t fucking drive on flat snow, but I get it, I learned to drive under the lake effect. But yeah this is easy mode rain driving. The wind isn’t pushing you, there’s no surprise rivers, it’s just wet ground with your wipers on and it’s like that for half the year. You don’t bother using an umbrella, why can’t you drive in this rain
I learned how to drive in the snow because I grew up in the foothills, the boonies. Snow and inclines, flash floods, windstorms take down so many trees that all the routes to … fucking anywhere are blocked for days to a week, along with the power grid.
I, foolishly, expected that that was normal, that everybody learned how treacherous weather can be on driving.
All these damn city slickers just be fucking playing bumper cars, watchin their tiktoks, gorramit!
Ptooie!
Oh yeah folks out here can barely handle snow unless it’s on a mountain, even up north where it snows. Meanwhile my Ohioan ass can’t deal with ice + elevation, but I kinda love driving on ice about once or twice a year. Give me a blizzard that cuts the power out over a heat wave with no AC.
I also miss windstorms, thunderstorms, and tornadoes. The sky should try to kill you from time to time. It keeps you sharp. Fuck noreasters and hurricanes though, that’s too much.
In general, ICE is always the problem. Even in Las Vegas.
The eternal enemy of Minnesota
Nah, this is more fun to jack off to. Speaking of, have y’all heard how terrible the Cali Burritos are out east?
Hey I get this reference. Sick meta.
I’ve never even heard of a Cali Burrito. Is it made of acid rain and somehow simultaneously water shortages?
It’s a Pittsburgh sandwich but burrito form and with guac. I had to look it up and am not impressed, just like the Pittsburghers failed to impress me. The fries are better on the side dang it
You see that little bump in the middle, those are the Ozark Mountains. The East coast’s seem perfectly fine from here
Talk about some more really old old mountains.
Those are some nice rolling hills.
And time will do the same to the west.
It is where the hillbillies live after all.
Those mountains to the east have endured much more bullshit than those young whippersnapper ranges in the west. They’re story begins as part of the African continental plate.
whatever you do, just don’t live down there
No worries: those server chunks haven’t been explored yet. Give it time.
Gonna fall into the ocean
I’ve lived in several places, all FLAT. Whenever I visit a mountainous place like Denver, it always seems so weird that there are these mountains always looming over me. At least you always know which way is west.
I grew up in hill country and I cannot for the life of me understand how people live in the flatlands. It makes me physically uncomfortable.
Oh god, same. I’m a mountain kid, the plains make me agoraphobic as hell. I tried living in the Midwest. I literally was slowly going insane, the landscape and the people were driving me crazy. I’m not kidding, I had to come home and restart my prescription.
Praire madness is so damn real. I thought it was made up. NO. I love my mountains, I can’t live without them.
Same. It’s disorienting.
Flat lands are like the liminal spaces of lands
They are the backrooms of geography
Those mountains are literally older than bones
Mountains in East Coast are generally older while mountains in West Coast are generally taller
Appalanchians are over 500 million years old. They need to sit down and rest more.
Some sign in iowa somewhere also says, “welcome to mount pleasant”
Where is the mountain, Iowa?
It’s pleasant, because you don’t have to ascend it!
It’s a conceptual mountain, duh.
Just wait until you hear about “Dutch Mountains”…
The geographical feature that you have no control over is for losers.
What’s that? Can’t hear you, I’m a mile above sea level and breathing the freshest god damn air on Earth.
Up? Where all my smog goes?
Nice try, skylanders. I’m going underground, where the real fresh air is hiding.
How do you know our Deep Anthems?! Reveal your treasonous source, skylander!
I love my Cascades and the Rockies are majestic and impressive, but the Appalachians are basically the wizened old crones of mountains. They’re weird and mysterious. They’re full of forests and traditions and stories. They demand respect.
Also, listen, folks from the eastern Midwest are barely used to hills then having to drive through them is scary.
Ah, yes. The Old Gods of Appalachia.
Don’t forget, they ae older and LOCATED IN THE RIGHT SPOT! Fucking Rockies just decide to pop up wherever they feel like.
I don’t know. The Appalachians technically span an ocean. Though, they have a different name on the other side.
I’m in Minnesota and I get super carsick just driving in Wisconsin. I’ve gone up the mountain on Orcas island in Washington and it was very beautiful but I actually thought I was gonna hurl. It feels just like those pirate ship carnival rides. I really don’t know how people ride those without getting sick.
However the small mountains (more like big hills tbh) along the north shore of Lake Superior are fine and don’t make sick at all for some reason.
Pallisade head! I love the north shore. Moved away and miss it quite a bit
