Elevation Rumination

How would you react?

For the sake of fun let’s imagination that you have lived your entire life on an endlessly flat prairie. In your 37 years on the planet you’ve seen a picture or two of a mountain but you have never actually been in the physical proximity of one.

Would you believe that mountains exist? Would you be prone to accept the crazy-ass flat-earth theory? Would you become a cloud enthusiast since clouds are about the only thing that makes you look up? What kind of concept of mountains would you have?

Now let’s say we put you in a car or on a train or covered wagon and we took you far away from your home to actually see a real mountain for the first time. How would you react seeing a mountain from 50 miles away? How would you react looking up at the mountain from the foot of the mountain? How would you react going up onto that mountain? And once at the top of the mountain how would you react looking down at the endless flat land from which you came?

How would your life change? How much would you miss the endlessly flat land? Or would you?

Now let’s say you lived your entire life in the mountains and then someone took you down from the mountains and drove you out into the middle of the endlessly flat prairie and told you that you had to stay there for the next ten years.

Would you be able to sleep at night? How much would you miss the mountains? Would you miss them with all your being? Would you start feeling seasick? Would you become disconnected from the Earth and reality as you’ve always known it? You may not become a flat-earther but what other bizarre conspiracy theories would you succumb to? Would you somehow feel doomed?

How often do you think about mountains?

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Speaking of photographs of mountains…