Landforms

A Lake District beck in spate and the Mississippi in flood are the same machine at different stations: steep and narrow, then lazy and wide.

A mountain is not a hill with ambition. Height, slope, and a flat top are different machines.

A waterfall is a nick point walking upstream.

When the water slows, the load sits down: slip-off slope, levée, floodplain, delta, estuary.

A more aggressive neighbour can steal a headwater. The elbow is the scar.

Constructive waves build. Destructive waves take. Longshore drift is the conveyor. Cave–arch–stack–stump is the headland’s life.

Ice is a river that can be a kilometre thick. It leaves a cirque, an arête, a horn, a U, and a pile of till.

Limestone does not just break. It dissolves along joints: pavement, swallow hole, cave.

Yardangs are carved. Barchans are built. Wind is a sculptor where vegetation is thin.

Holderness till does not wait for a wave. After rain the cliff rotates on a curved shear and the toe shoves the beach.

The Cairngorms still carry freeze–thaw scars. Alaska still has ice wedges growing. Cold without a glacier is its own factory.