OK, maybe I'm overstating it, but only just a little.At first glance, it's just four shots of limestone rock formations on the coast of Victoria, Australia. Then... wait a minute... each one is captioned with a different date. 2 July 2005; 3 July 2005; 14 January 1990; and 15 January 1990. While the pictures are all of the "Twelve Apostles" and the "London Bridge," each is very different.
For starters, on January 14, 1990, when the place was still called London Bridge, it was a natural bridge from land to sea. Overnight, the part that connected the bridge to the land was gone.
Fifteen years later, you can see why they changed the name. Bridge? What bridge? On July 2, 2005 it's simply stacks of rocks: presumably twelve of them, though in the photo you can only see six - and, then, well, just five by sunset July 3.
The ocean and tides had been doing that hard (or do I mean easy?) work of changing the landscape forever.
Which reminded me that in the 1990's, I was living in Santa Cruz, California, trying to be a vegan, dating a boy far too young for me, and frequently visiting a place called Natural Bridges State Beach. In 1990, there was only one mudstone bridge remaining of the original three. Today, there's no bridge at all, and the literature provided by the park service deemphasizes the rock formation and focuses on the main tourist attraction: the eucalyptus forest that forms the temporary home of over 100,000 Monarch butterflies during their annual migration.
If you had told me in 1990 that by 2012 I'd be a divorced, barbecue-loving special education teacher living in the Bible Belt and using the word "y'all" on a daily basis (not to mention everything in between), you know I would have said in my Valley Girl accent, "Yeah, like, right."
This postcard, then, is a literal depiction of how changeable all things are. It's called erosion at the beach, but the word has a negative connotation of destruction. In living things, it's not erosion. For the monarchs, it's called metamorphosis, which has a definition I can live with: a change in the form or nature of a thing or person into a completely different one.
This postcard is a reminder of what I sometimes forget, that ultimate truism: "this too shall pass."
And this is not, by its very nature, a bad thing.
1 comment:
Beautiful. what a perfect example of change, and your point that it isn't always a negative thing. If we don't change, we die. For the monarch, when they come out of the crysalis, if they don't have enough room during the transition, they can't fly. Is that also a lesson for us? I think so. I need reminding often that truism of 'nothing is forever'. Now I'm feeling a little sad about that though. I only want the bad days and moments to pass. oh, the lessons just keep coming.
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