If you are anyplace where you can see the outdoors (in a place where life is free to do its thing—not in a concrete jungle or barren big-box parking lot) then you are witnessing the results of the living processes of plants and animals as they change the planet around them.
Darwin was one of the first to really dig down—so to speak—on the ways that life on Earth has been and is being constantly changed by life itself. And I think this is very (sorry again) grounding knowledge towards appreciating our landscapes that evolve around us and under our very feet.
I offer this wonderful AEON essay Our Earth, shaped by life that focuses on Darwin’s work on the formation of atolls (to which I have zero exposure) and late in his life, on earthworms that I am happy to see daily over the summer in my garden and compost pile.
I learned the most, not surprisingly, about atolls and the LONG life’s work of corals that can accumulate for tens of millions of years, to depths of almost a mile below the surf of a typical atoll. This is kinda cool.
And as I look out over our back-porch landscape, I think again about the soft limestones of ancient seas (corals or single celled carbonate-clad phytoplankton) and their impact on the formation of the Southern Appalachians. These hills seem so permanent. Hardly.
The limestone layers of those colliding and corrugated plates have eroded faster than the low (and more resistant) sandstone ridges that frame the low places on either side. Where I live in SW VA we call that resulting valley the New River Valley—(or it would be the Shenandoah or Tennessee to the north and south respectively.)
The Valley of Western Migration continues to fascinate me, knowing that the early pioneers pushed westward in their wagons, following crude but relatively passable highways made possible by the eroding chalky limestones of Paleozoic oceans.
Source: USGS Groundwater Atlas
BONUS: A very good primer on the hydrology of the Ridge and Valley. I know. Thank me later.
Valley and Ridge Aquifer System from Penn State. (PA also shares this physiographic feature with us. And early settlers from Philadelphia would have known the Wilderness Road well. @ff