Читать книгу Shaped by Snow. Defending the Future of Winter онлайн

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“Ayj, you’re holding up the group behind you!” my father called from a few switchbacks above.

He was right. The group I was stalling was eyeing me hesitantly, unsure if they should try to pass or not. Or maybe they were uncertain what to think of the preteen waving a net as tall as she was through the grass along the side of the trail.

My new obsession was bugs. I had been given a biology assignment that summer to catch insects, kill them, and categorize them. I didn’t like the killing part, but I loved learning the scientific names. Beetles became Coleoptera, dragonflies Odonata, bees Hymenoptera, grasshoppers Orthoptera. I took the net with me wherever I went.

I jogged up a few switchbacks to catch my family. My cousins were leading the charge and singing as they hiked, their voices strong despite the elevation. Panting, I fell in step behind my grandpa, the soles of my shoes padding softly on the dense mountain dirt.

Much of the western United States is almost a mile above sea level. We were hiking at an elevation of about ten thousand feet that day. Over ten million years ago the western US began to rise, expanding as it did so. Like a cake rising, the crust of the earth cracked as the expansion occurred, creating faults throughout the West and forming the basins and ranges of the Basin and Range Province. The most active of these faults is the Wasatch Fault, responsible for the drastic eight-thousand-foot elevation difference between the peaks and the valley floors. The intensity of the Wasatch Fault is such that, if not for the constant erosion by the elements, the peaks in the Wasatch could be forty thousand feet in elevation rather than the twelve thousand they are today.