BLUE HILL–When Larry Gibson used to see someone taking a photo of the mountains of Appalachia, he’d ask “Why?… The mountains would always be there.” But he was wrong. Four hundred seventy mountains have already been destroyed. Coal companies use explosives to blow up the tops of the mountains and dump the rock, or overburden, into the valleys. The companies extract coal from the open seam and then repeat the process, using more explosives to expose another seam. What were once the smallest mountains are now among the highest.