Wednesday, September 17, 2008

AFTER






















Bellingham's waterfront did not always consist of pockets of sandy beaches, reminiscent of the ocean beaches I grew up with in Northern California. These local beaches have been engineered in the past few years to resemble something other than the coast of the Salish Sea.

They are entirely lovely. At the same time, they are disconcerting. Washington is not California. I wonder about this blurring of differences, this disregard for the integrity of the Pacific Northwest landscape.

4 comments:

R.L. Bourges said...

interesting. I didn't know about the Salish, so learned something, thank you.

as for changing the coastline, it reminds me of the planting of palm trees in the Florida Panhandle to make it look more "Floridian" - said palm trees being imported from... Madagascar. hm...

best

Anonymous said...

I've been listening to Emmylou Harris' album "All I Intended To Be" and her song "Not Enough" put me in mind of you and what you have written here. The last two stanzas read:
How can it be/The ties that bind/Cut down deep and are so unkind/When we lose them we'll never find/Anything stronger than the ties that bind
I still have your memory/One or two pictures of you and me/Life is long and life is tough/But when you love someone/Life's not long enough.
The album is full of gems.

w

Zhoen said...

Ah, nature will change it all in a generation after, all is vanity.

am said...

Thanks for mentioning that album to me, w.

The CD titled "All The Roadrunning," with Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris, is a good one, too.