The Appalachians are among the oldest of mountains–they were part of Pangaea 300 million years ago. In fact, they lay at its center. Pangaea means the whole land, the Mother Earth. And I learned just recently that a small park I went to as a child in Malden, MA has the cone of a volcano that was active in that time–part of the Appalachians back then, now a trace element, kept intact across time by a mile-high glacier that covered the area during the many Ice Ages. So as I played on the grounds and climbed the rocks, I moved over primeval land and whether I knew it or not, felt the tremors of ancient fire and the cold of ancient ice.
