The Tale of the Giant Sheep and Why the World has Mountains

Way, way back in the world long ago, before man walked the earth, the world was covered in snow and ice. This frozen land was walked by flocks of sheep so large they looked over the tops of trees. There were millions of these colossal animals, wandering far and wide. The giant sheep covered the frozen land like bison on the American plains before the railroads came. As the flocks traveled they followed their traditional paths, marching in columns through the deep snow, great cloven hoof after great cloven hoof trampling the snow down to solid ice. The world was cold and the snow continued to fall and each fresh snowfall was trampled to deepen the ice on these ovine passages. And as the sheep traveled they dropped manure, which was also trampled onto the traditional paths. And so it continued, with each layer of snow and each layer of manure being trampled by great cloven hoof after great cloven hoof, packed to a dense base that grew in altitude with each journey of the great beasts over the trails. The sheep were pleasing to the gods of the icy past, who provided the flocks with abundant hay so that they might flourish. The sheep, being sheep, squandered some of the hay, which fell to the trails to be trampled along with the snow and the manure, pounded down as layers by great cloven hoof after great cloven hoof, slowly building the paths higher and higher. And the snow continued to fall so that these paths built of layer upon layer of ice and hay and manure were lower than the deep snow. Indeed to step from the paths was dangerous as the sheep would sink in the softer surrounding snow. So the sheep stayed on the paths, and the paths became ridges, the ridges grew to mountains, the mountains stood tall and continued to grow to great heights. But the great heights to which the paths rose were obscured in the greater heights of the surrounding drifts.

Whether the gods of the icy past grew bored with a white earth covered with sheep, or whether they were perhaps replaced by gods who preferred a warmer climate we don’t know. But the world began to warm up. The drifts surrounding the paths began to melt, and they melted, and melted. Each day the world was lower and the paths began to rise above. And the drifts still melted and melted. It seemed the world might melt away, but finally there was earth instead of snow. Towering above the newfound soil were long ridges, some reaching greatly into the sky. The paths of the giant sheep would not melt. They were formed of ice and hay and manure, insulated and dense. The grass began to turn green and the birds sang and the world began to fill with other animals. Yet the mountainous ridges built by the sheep remained, hammered to strength by great cloven hoof after great cloven hoof, like iron forged by a smith.

The giant sheep are no more, but their ancestors remain, tiny creatures by comparison, each hardly the size of a single cloven hoof from their colossal predecessors. Though they have changed greatly in stature, their nature is the same. They continue to travel familiar paths, trampling deep snow, paving the way with manure and squandered hay, pounding it to a dense roadbed with small cloven hoof after small cloven hoof. And as each spring comes, the end to the abbreviated ice age of winter, the drifts around the paths melt. The ground is rediscovered, the grass turns green, and the great manure covered ridges remain to tell the tale of colder times.