Holiday Rerun: Hello Up There

 Ok, for all of you studying at home, here's a question for both geography and physiology:

How come mountains get taller and people get shorter?

First, we turn to the words of Donovan, in his beloved song "There Is A Mountain." This was a hit song in 1967. Later, the melody from the song was turned into a jam that lasted almost 3 days, as played by the Allman Bros. 

The main point of the lyrics to the song runs like this:

First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is

First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is

Well, that makes it all clear. My problem is, I am quite a literalist. I don't get symbolism and arcane allusions or even hints. If you say there is a mountain, what happened to that mountain two minutes later that caused you to say it's gone?

I looked it up. Those "in the know" say that if you're on a hike and you see a mountain, and then you climb it, when you're at the top, you don't see a mountain anymore because you're ON the mountain. 

The problem is, these people know about mountains, but they sure don't know me, if they think I'm about to climb Mt Everest!

I'm getting shorter as I get older, but not old Everest. And hold up printing the new encyclopedia...it's getting taller up in there! 

You see, back in 1998, Wally Berg, a mountain climber from out of Copper Mountain, Colorado, scaled Mt Everest, and placed a Global Positioning System receiver up near the peak. 

Five days later, another climber got up there and picked up the GPS receiver, and found that the mountain had gotten even closer to the sky! People who study these things figured out, from checking out other GPS doodads up there, 5 1/2 miles high, that Mt Everest is growing at a rate of almost two inches per year!

It turns out that up there in the Himalayas, where the Indian continental plate pushes up against the Asian continental plate, underground action is pushing the mountain higher at the seam.

This is similar to holiday dinnertime at the family homestead, where Uncle Roger's plate, heaped with meat and fowl and gravies and sauces, pushes Aunt Edna's plate right off the TV stand they were sharing. 

The rugs needed a good going-over by the Stanley Steemer anyway.