"Leylines" of North America

[Evie]

So I'm still working on a urban/young adult fantasy novel project.

Now as is fairly typical for that sort of story, there are spells between the mundane and the witched (folklore creatures, witches, ghosts, etc). There are also faults in the whole spell: areas where it isn't as strong. Sometime these are localized points, and sometime these are great fault lines, running hundreds of miles. Some are weaker, some are stronger, and in North America, there are thirteen of them that are identified as the thirteen great fault lines.

I'm trying to finalize my list of such fault lines, and I was hoping for some input on what the fine posters here feel should be the fault lines.

These being the general rules :

1)All faultlines follow a geographic feature (human or natural) that represent either a border or a road (either way, a connection between worlds)

2)The cultural significance of the border or road (not economic, not transportation, cultural impact), and its uniqueness, define how powerful the fault line is. So all the thirteen main ones should have strong unique significance.

3)Fault lines wax and wane as their uniqueness and significance change. So it should be based on what is significant and unique in recent memory, not what was significant and unique two centuries ago.

On the other hand, a road that hasn't been in use for decades and even centuries could still be a major leyline, if its significance still resonate today.

------------------------

As I said I have a tentative list, but I'm curious to see what people come up with before throwing my names into the debate.

 

[peter grimes]

I have no advice on the idea behind the leylines, but I can offer a couple ideas for proposed faults.

I recently learned that Broadway, in NYC, does not follow the old Indian road, as we had all been told. The original Broadway went through the east village and Stuyvesant town, up along the east side for a few miles, before heading to the west side.

Also, Manhattan-centric, the neighborhood of Marble Hill in The Bronx is is actually a remnant of the Manhattan island, that was separated from it by a project to redirect the Haarlem River. They hen back filled the old Haarlem channel, and so now Marble Hill is unnaturally connected to the mainland.

Another thing to look at is how there's a chunk of Northwest African plate stuck to the eastern flank of North America. I think I read the it's represented by the Jurassic sandstone ridge hat runs south roughly along the Connecticut River Valley.


Another old geological feature that's of interest is Lake Missoula. Pretty fascinating.

My two cents, for now...

 

[Core Imposter]

I really have no particular idea what you are doing, but I thought about the old Indian trails that run across my part of the state in an east-west orientation. You can still find parts of them in areas not developed. The idea was that this was a highway connecting the Cherokee in the Blue Ridge with coastal populations of other tribes and that further east there were northern trails that

Rivers and creeks were of course borders and highways in native times and most roads were merely portages. This particular trail was supposedly singular for traversing a long stretch absent from navigable waters.

Some parts of it were undoubtedly used by settlers. I don't think you could possibly prove it was one long connected trail today but local lore and legend says that it was.

 

[Core Imposter]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trading_Path


The Trading Path (a.k.a. Occaneechi Path, The Path to the Catawba, the Catawba Road, Indian Trading Path, Warriors' Path, etc.) is not simply one wide path, as many named historic roads were or are. It was a corridor of roads and trails between the Chesapeake Bay region (mainly the Petersburg, Virginia area) and the Cherokee, Catawba, and other Native-American groups in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Indians had used and maintained much of the path for their expansive trading network centuries prior to its use by Europeans and/or European-Americans. Indian and later European/European-American settlements occupied key points along the path.

Both Natives and Newcomers mainly used the Trading Path for commercial cargo carriage. In early colonial times, Virginian traders used the path to travel to Native American towns in the Waxhaws. They led long pack caravans of horses carrying "loads of guns, gunpowder, knives, jewelry, blankets, and hatchets, among other goods", and travel southwest to Indian villages along the journey to the Waxhaws region, in the vicinity of present-day Mecklenburg County.[1] They exchanged European goods for furs and deerskins.

Because the path was well laid out through the complex geography of the piedmont area, connecting fords of many streams, it was roughly followed by the 19th-century railroad. Later, engineers who designed Interstate 85 followed much of this route again from Petersburg, VA, to roughly the Georgia state border. Many of the earliest towns along its route remain to this day. Many remnants of the Trading Path are still visible.

The Trading Path underlies the Piedmont Urban Crescent, which since the late 19th century has had steady growth. It is a spine of polycentric urban development in North Carolina. Cities of the Crescent are the centers of government, finance, education and research, and business in the state.

The pathway in particular that I am thinking of is, in the section I am familar with, sort of parallel to I-85 though several counties and does appear to cross over it several times. I knew some folks 25 years ago that had the hobby of searching for sections of this on weekends.

 

[Borachio]

How about ley tunnels?

It is said, to this day, that there is a network of tunnels under London (England). Where ghostly rattling noises can still be heard, and the pitter-patter of thousands of feet.

 

[Old Hippy]

perhaps an even older ley line is seen in Australia aboriginal songlines (maps?)

Songlines often came in sequences, much like a symphony or album today.By singing a song cycle in the appropriate order could navigate vast distances, often travelling through the deserts of Australia's interior (a fact which amazed early anthropologists who were stunned by Aborigines that frequently walked across hundreds of kilometres of desert picking out tiny features along the way without error). Each group had its own set of songlines that were passed from generation to generation so that future generations would know how to navigate when in neighbouring tribes’ territories. The extensive system of songlines in Australia varied in length from a few kilometres to hundreds of kilometres in length crossing through lands of many different Indigenous peoples.Since a songline can span the lands of several different language groups, different parts of some songlines were in different languages corresponding to the region the songline was navigating through at the time, and thus could only be fully understood by a person speaking all of the languages in the song.

Spoiler :

Link to video.
an idea also seen in the US... tho not in quite the same way

Link to video.

 

[Borachio]

I thought travelling through neighbouring tribal lands was a big no-no. Punishable by instant death with a pointy stick?

 

[Cutlass]

For the continent you could take the major rivers that are heavily used. Mississippi, Ohio, Missouri, Hudson, St Lawrence, Colorado, and then pick a few other things as well.

 

[Evie]

Most of you are thinking far more historical than I am XD.

To give you an idea, my tentative list is as follow:

1. The Mississippi. The mother of all waters, the river between old west and far west. Obvious.
2. The Saint Lawrence. The highway to the heart of the continent from the earliest colonial times to today. What more is there to say?
3. The Ottawa river. Once a key road into the continent for the fur trade, and today of course the border region between French and English Canada.
4. The Mexican Border
5. The Canadian Border
6. The Trans-Canada Highway. Link one end of Canada to the other (presumably this leyline would have originally followed the canoe routes, shifted to the railways, and now settled on the transcanadian) ¸
7. Route 66. None of the interstate really seem to stand out from the others (and no, "all the interstates" is not an option). but from the older US Highways, this one, even if retired, stand head and shoulder above the rest. Presumably it would be a leyline that has begun to fade, but that is still one of the great ones.
8. The Continental Divide. Perhaps the most obvious non-political geographic border in North America. Hugely important throughout history, and remain the great dividing line between two halves of the continent. Cover most of the famous parts of the Rockies, too.
9. The Great (Appalachian) Valley. Less relevant today, probably the least relevant of the lot today, but this one is there for storytelling purpose: I need something in the Appalachian region

And that leaves me with 4 spot, and some noticeable gaps: there is nothing running west of the mountains (either N-S or E-W) between the Canadian border and Los Angeles. Something to connect the Appalachian line to the Mississippi would be also be useful, and getting something that can join Route 66 around the Ozarks might also be good.

 

[Cutlass]

Something to connect the Appalachian line to the Mississippi would be also be useful,

The Hudson River and Erie Canal. Pacific Coast Highway

 

[Berzerker]

the toltec believed heaven had 13 layers

I thought leylines were considered to enhance magical power

new research suggests earthquakes concentrate gold along fault lines as gold bearing water evaporates

Mississippi River
Continental divide
San Andreas fault
30th parallel

 

[Old Hippy]

I thought travelling through neighbouring tribal lands was a big no-no. Punishable by instant death with a pointy stick?

no you stand at the boundary till someone wanders over, then just causally ask if you can travel across 'their' country....

something you should still do today when you go there in your landcruiser, even if you have a travel permit issued to you...

its actually fairly easy as they do not say no... so don't ask "if i go north along this track will I be able to buy petrol"
cause the answer will be... yes

 

[Cutlass]

There's also the Transcontinental Railroad.

 

[Antilogic]

Use the Georgia Guidestones, because they are effing weird.

 

[Borachio]

Ha! American Stonehenge!

With writing on them.

• Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
• Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
• Unite humanity with a living new language.
• Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
• Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
• Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
• Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
• Balance personal rights with social duties.
• Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
• Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.

Call me old fashioned, if you must, but it doesn't have the same impact as:

Which is just plain amazing.

Still, maybe it's simply a matter of time.

 

[ace99]

That's nice of the NWO to lay out their policy positions like that.

 

[Borachio]

But not a giant lizard to be seen. They're still in their underground bunkers, I presume.

7bn - 0.5 = 6.5 bn.

Where are all those people going to go, again?

 

[ace99]

Outrageous. The Dinosaurid race lives on the Moon, when they were discovered by Nazi astronauts in the waning days of the Third Reich.

 

[Borachio]

Ooops. Sorry. I must be one of those not numbered in the under 500 million then. See, that's how they're going to weed us out? A simple knowledge test of NWO history.

 

[Leonel]

There really ought to be a Writing thread in the arts and entertainment section so we can discuss writing projects like this.