It’s been a long process, untying the knot. It’s not over. Perhaps it never will be, perhaps it never should be. There have been Gordian Knot moments, moments when an Alexander the Great brought unconventional thinking, unconventional tools into play. Even so, mystery remains, the journey continues.

Geologists refer to a complex problem, one defying solution, as a knot. There are many geological knots but few are this challenging. David Rains Wallace names it: The Klamath Knot.

Although there is a taper at the north end it is otherwise a clenched fist. The metaphor is apt. Trying to prise out The Knot’s secrets is like opening the fingers of the circus strong man. The northern end of The Knot is anchored by mountains with strange names: Kalmiopsis, Siskiyou. The southern mountains bear more common names: Marble, Scott, Trinity, Salmon – but their stories are as mysterious.

South-to-north they run from Redding, CA to nearly Roseburg, OR; east-to-west, from I-5 to the Pacific coast. Throughout they are tortured, torturous; a jumbled mass of ancient rocks and younger geologic structures. At least part of the reason they have defied explanation is that they have defied exploration. Other than in the river basin that bears his name Jedidiah Smith was confounded by The Knot. We’ve done much to penetrate it since, but how do you unbraid all the strands in a land both time-filled and time-less?

For geologists the development of the plate tectonic paradigm helps. They already knew that four great north-south arc-shaped belts comprise most of The Knot. Different in age and rock types they were a long-standing enigma. We now know they came in-turn. Wallace calls the process a “jammed conveyor belt” based on his experiences in an apple processing plant. I think about them as a series of trains shunting onto railroad sidings. At speed.

Four massive train crashes; individual trains deformed to the point they are all but unrecognizable. We’ve done much to identify the remains; we know the rocks are old, much older than the Sierra Nevada or Cascades. But from where?

Certain rocks can tell us. Using magnetic minerals found within, geologists can determine the rock’s position in the earth’s magnetic field at time of formation – much like a navigator uses latitude and longitude. Unlike the Cascades or the Sierra – homegrown products – the four belts are strangers, to us and to each other, arrivals from across the wide Pacific.

The crashes created pile-ups, but ancient ones, not the crumpled landscape we see today. Today’s landscape is different, younger.

Several rivers belong to The Knot, among others: the Chetco, Illinois and Smith in the north; the Trinity, Scott and Salmon in the south. They rise within The Knot, have their origin, their being here. Some are straightforward. The Scott runs south-to-north from the base of the Scott Mountains to the Klamath River. The Trinity, however, rises far to the east and somewhat north of its confluence with the Klamath. It makes a horseshoe bend around the southern end of The Knot to get there.

Two rivers, with respect to their origins, have no relationship to The Knot: the Rogue and the Klamath, the two great arterials crossing the entirety of The Knot. They belong to the Cascades, one to the east side, one to the west. They are older than the mountainous country they cross, they are younger than the rocks in their canyons.

At every turn there is a riddle, a puzzle. Often answers produce even more puzzling questions. Wallace’s book is an ode to the strange, wonderful life present. But there is something here for us all: engaging with ambiguity, untangling threads, worrying a knot; developing a tolerance and, more importantly, an appreciation for mystery.

Yeats tells us that “The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” A surprising number of them can be found here.