:25:06
Eiger, Jungfrau, Matterhorn-
magical names.
:25:14
Like the immortal sea
:25:16
the mountains speak to something
deep in our human nature.
:25:20
they suggest the grandeur
and terror of human disorders...
:25:24
of unimaginably vast
processes...
:25:27
of time scales
where the individual life
:25:30
seems hardly more
than the span of a mayfly
:25:33
and the life
of a whole civilization
:25:36
is less than a mountain moment,
or heartbeat of common stones.
:25:48
ln the scale of the earth's
plates, the movements
:25:51
are imperceptible.
:25:53
ln the scale of man
:25:55
they are the living nightmare
:25:57
of an earthquake.
:26:12
This is earthquake country.
:26:14
a great fault tears 700 miles
through the crust of California.
:26:19
lt is the San Andeas Fault
:26:22
the classic example of the last
major tectonic process.
:26:27
Beneath us, two great plates
of the Earth's crust
:26:30
are moving and grinding
laterally past one another
:26:34
generating earthquakes
:26:35
in the spasms
of their slow movement
:26:38
To the left, a huge slice
of western California
:26:42
rides the Pacific Plate
as it drifts northward
:26:45
past the American Plate
on the right
:26:51
The fitful movement averages
but two inches a year
:26:54
yet it has already carried
more than 300 miles.
:26:58
And, in 50 million years,
this slice of California