Mountain

by Clement Wood

[...]and intermittent deposits, are buckled, folded, and squeezed into mountain chains; huge slices of ageless schists and gneisses are torn away and driven above the younger strata; there is an immense crumpling and rupture. So are the hills born. At last the time of parturition came for the mountain. Force, says Marx, is the midwife of progress; force, a vast and burning upheaval from below, a strained and spasmodic pressure from the molten womb of the earth, bowed the mountain out of its deep resting place, tilted away the early sea, arched its summit high over the surrounding lowlands. The stress of its long birth-pangs squeezed and fused its scattered substance into a closer, [...].

280 pages, Paperback

First published December 18, 2012