And It Became Land

And It Became Land. . Look out across the Smoky Mountains landscape. , How did this land come to be?, They carefully got all the mud and they laid it out on the rocks. And when it was dry enough, Grandfather threw it out into the water, and it became land. And the buzzard flew with his great wings. Each time when his wings went down, it would make a big valley, and each time the wings would go up,it would make a big mountain. , Adapted from Living Stories of the Cherokee, “How the World Was Made,” Kathi Smith Littlejohn, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth....And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters he called seas. , Genesis I:I,9,10, The Bible, King James Version, The earliest beginnings of the Great Smoky Mountains were a time of drastic fluctuations of temperature and massive upheavals in the earth's crust. The bedrock of the Appalachian chain was probably [millions of] years old when it was metamorphosed and partially melted in the first mountain-building phase. , Great Smoky Mountains: The Story Behind the Scenery, Rita Cantu