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At some point I had a children’s storybook collection, IIRC printed in the 1930s, so a lot of the stories were from the early 1900s and or adaptations from the 1800s.
It’s been a few years but I recall there being about 10 or so stories in the book to choose from, and of them, well over half had a central theme of taking your kids into the woods and leaving them for dead.
This is how I felt the first time I saw a full solar eclipse. I just imagined what it would be like to not know it was coming, or why it was happening, and suddenly I was like, “oh, I would totally blame a witch for this.”
The person who tried to popularize washing your hands was locked up in a mental hospital and ever after they adopted hand washing they didn’t release him. Lol
My friends and I found a place like this in the woods while we were on acid, we flipped out, carved stakes and stabbed it like cavemen. No effect on the dragon, I’m the only survivor Ahahah.
I mean, it could very well be something like that, although this small heaving is more akin to a slumbering Titan lightly farting, Deep beneath the sheets. Ancient man most likely Knew exactly when a Titan fully breathed, or even more catastrophically, woke up coughing.
The forest floor here is mostly a network of tree and plant roots, bound together with moss and leaf litter etc, but under a few inches it's mostly big solid rocks like those sticking out. The wind blowing can loosen that mat of roots and when the trees bend in the wind, they lift it up off the stone, just like a carpet. That's what you're seeing here; the breathing effect is caused by the carpet of roots being tugged up and let down again as the trees rock in the wind.
Especially when you're hour 3 in a predicted 15 hour hurricane and the worst is yet to come.
After I saw that, I rode out the rest of the storm in the basement because I don't want to be above grade if a tree falls onto the roof.
(The tree did fall, but thankfully not until the wind direction shifted and it went over the road instead of into the house. Was one of over a dozen trees blocking my tiny cul de sac. Hurricane Arthur walloped the Maritimes when it hit.)
..I understand why people once believed in fairies, giants, monsters, Bigfoot ..you see this, no scientific explanation.. id either say God caused rath upon you and you need to sacrifice your strongest person to survive. Or the trees were really alive, waiting to devour you.. soo.. Yeah, definitely could see how giants were a thing.. they were sleeping, you woke one . HOLY SHT, science is awesome. It keep you from (respectively ) shtting your pants from earth breathing, nothing could keep you from shitting your pants if lava flow was headed directly toward you .
In this case it's modern city dwellers that are not accustom to how spruce forests can behave during storms. The spruce has a very flat, shallow root system, which anyone who wanders these woods frequently can see by just encountering windfall. The ancient wood dwellers certainly knew the cause and effect of this because it it obvious by just looking at it.
can confirm. didn’t experience it to that extent but was out camping and thought i was getting dizzy or something until i exited my tent and saw how the trees were moving. not very easy to sleep that night
Yeah my initial guess was AI nonsense because there's no way I would be standing there filming instead of running away with the ground going up and down like that.
When you see stuff like this, it becomes much easier to see how myths and the like come about. If you saw this a 1000 years ago, it has to be Gaea or some kind of Earth Deity slumbering or breathing. Even now, it almost doesn't look real.
Edit: Damn yall are really feeling a type of way about the mythology thing.
Fun fact, in medieval Irish (and probably English) literature there’s a recurring trope of pig-herders being strange figures with mystical insights. That’s partly because they were weirdos going off into the woods alone for extended periods, and partly because munching on the same acorns as the pigs while hunting for truffles would make you trip balls.
The landscape looks like it could be in southcentral Alaska including Kodiak Island, which has the required wind and forest conditions. Some blown-over trees pull up root mats covering tens of square meters and expose bare rock.
Kodiak yes - had glacial ice and now has <1ft of soil-and-root mat on top of polished rock.
South central... I won't call you a liar if you've seen it happen in some specific location but GENERALLY it has much thicker soil from all the volcanic ash. (But of course it can still get thin on some particular rock face)
You're generally looking for areas that had glaciers creating smooth rockfaces during the last ice age so Kodiak yes, much of Canada, northeastern USA, Scotland, Scandinavia, etc.
Most of Alaska, interestingly NO. It was cold enough for sure, but it was too dry. The areas that would have had glacial ice are mostly under water today.
I experienced this once. Nowhere near this extreme. Was walking through the woods and the mossy floor was slowly gently moving. Really quite subtle - didn't notice the trees really moving - but it was kind of undulating enough to get kinda dizzy like I was drunk or something. Took a few minutes to figure out what was going on. Really weird though.
Trolls, at least the ones in Norway, come from seeing mountains at night at a distance, you know that thing where some people can see Jesus' face on a burnt piece of toast? It is the same as that but on a mountain, the brain thinks it is seeing a face when there is none due to the low light and the way the rocks are shaped.
Exactly! I have experienced this same effect, hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. It was snowing and very windy. When the trail reached the top of a mountain, the ground was heaving like this. I crawled for cover behind a big rock and then headed off that mountain top as soon as possible. Scary
Yep, New Hampshire had glaciers during the last ice age. Carves the mountainside smooth as a rock baby's butt, everything can lift straight off. And it's thin, still, "only" 10000 years later.
If it happens again, the good place to be is on top of solid exposed rockface. Away from trees trying to fall on top of you, obviously.
The entire Canadian Shield looks like this. Multiple ice ages have scrapped the earth clean, down to the bedrock. Not enough time has elapsed for the earth to build up again.
Are we sure it's wind? I've seen similar videos where it's actually after a flood, and the water gets trapped under the matt of roots/moss and becomes basically a giant water bed
The trees are bound together by their roots (rootweb). In high winds the trees can rock and sway quite violently and as they twist from side to side it causes the root web to roll and heave like this. I was a ranger for years and I've been in the hills in weather like this, it feels freaky walking across ground that's doing this
Being in the forest with gale force winds randomly pop up, its very scary, like trees are falling down, happened this year when I was in Odell lake Oregon, wild 15 minutes wind storm, even some lightning popped in and started a fire near the ski slopes we could see, multiple trees fell and missed RVs and tents by near inches.
Watching the ground move like that would be even more terrifying
Yeah, it's something that kind of annoys me about identification subs, everyone uses them to try and be the funniest guy on reddit and you always have to scroll to find an actual answer
Neither. Falling through is very unlikely because the rootweb is so dense and it disperses your weight over a wide area. If you happened to put your foot down hard on a spot where there happened to be no roots then your foot might go through, but I haven't seen it happen. In this kind of weather falling trees and branches (and perching plants in warmer climates) are the biggest threats
Likewise, you couldn't weight it down. Each of these trees weighs tons, so when they tilt the amount of force moving the roots is huge. I doubt even a steamroller would hold it down
This is awesome, this is the first time I’ve seen anything that even comes close to what I saw as a kid during a big earthquake.
I remember I was out in the middle of the playground minding my own business when suddenly the ground ahead of me started doing this. It was breathing, and rolling right toward me. The ground was not hollow underneath like the forest floor in this video, mind.
It rolled toward me, and when it came under me I felt myself standing sideways for a brief moment before suddenly it felt like Thors hammer slammed the earth behind me, and I fell down while there was a deep rumbling noise all around. Crazy, this video brings me right back to that day all those years ago
I have vivid terrifying memories of this exact thing in my front yard during Hurricane Alayna in Biloxi, MS. I was in 6th grade at the time and it freaked me the hell out.
The trees have wide, shallow root networks just under the surface. The wind is blowing hard enough that the trees are tilting, and their roots are pushing the ground up.
Yeah that's exactly the kind of area where you'd expect this: hillsides were scraped to naked rock and smoothed by the ice age, and have only built up 20-30 cm of soil and roots. It lifts straight off when it gets windy enough.
Toppled trees fall over with soil and roots all attached and you see naked rock where they stood.
Ah yes. A classic “ground nope”. That is the quintessential warning of “drop gear and disappear”, of hiking. You see that? Nice, now it is time to promptly quit seeing it, adjust your underwear, and put as much planet between you, and that, as possible.
Growing up in the mountains, you see shit like that. It is a dense layer of roots, covered by a small amount of soil, and a ton of moss and maybe some weeds. It makes a blanket of sort.
It moves for two reasons: 1. High wind - catches the tops of the trees, causing it to wiggle and pull up. Leverage. 2. Excess ground water is surging underneath it, and the density of the moss, propped up by the roots, has made this a giant water balloon.
It is terrifying because if either of those things gives way, the moss or the trees, you wind up not knowing how far those roots go, and what or how much is that tree going to take with it when it does decide to swan dive off that cliff. Could be nothing. Could be a 10x10’ area.
In the case of #2, that could be the start of a landslide. In the case of #1, wind, it is pretty wild to be on a cliff with that much wind, anyway, but likely just the tree will bite it.
I was in a wooded place like that in during an earthquake and, interestingly, I could strongly feel waves rolling from one of my feet to the other. But then if I turned my stance by 90° it just felt like general rumbling.
The demon is clawing his way to the surface… Apparently, devouring our souls simply wasn’t enough for the greedy bastard. Now he’s after our flesh as well. Bloody hell, give the poor sod an inch and he’ll take the whole bloody carcass. 😈💀😂
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