Rising?

Photo credit: Tony Chen

In time the Rockies may crumble

Gibraltor may tumble

They’re only made of clay

—Lyrics by George Gershwin (the last song he wrote)

THAT ICONIC MOUNTAIN is Mount Everest, the world’s tallest. It has a storied history, often in the context of conquest; that is, men and women with help of intrepid Sherpa “conquer” a marvel of Nature. In recent days, we’ve learned from scientists that Everest is growing. The news comes from the journal Nature Geoscience, a peer-reviewed science journal (with many other interesting stories as well). The idea that the world’s tallest mountain is not immutable is not easily grasped. Its enormous mass surely resists any force. Now we know that it is not static; it’s moving.

The journal explains the phenomena that have pushed the mountain even higher, but even so, as with many things in science, it’s hard to imagine. For now, it’s beyond my ken, so I’ll take the scientists at their word.

There’s an obvious moral to the story: If there are pressures great enough to push this mountain higher, perhaps there also are pressures that can push our own lives to higher levels. We may think we are the same day in and day out, but we’re changing. Unlike Everest, we humans can affect our own changes as well. Choices we make can work with (or against) unseen forces to help us do and be better.

We probably won’t read about it in a science journal, but the exciting news is that people can and do get taller, better, kinder, gentler and perhaps collectively beneficial to each other.

—RJ Stewart