Longitudinal longings

I have not yet produced a travelogue of our 2010 trip to Nova Scotia (what will become Long Journey Chapter 3) in part because I wanted to expound upon 2008's and 2009's creative efforts by showcasing this one from a longitudinal perspective, and to do that involved waiting.   

It's hard to explain, but I just had an overwhelming sense that this effort had to be all about TIME:  the nature, passage, and effects of it - our relationship with it as we struggle through it in our humanity.

At no point was this feeling stronger than when we visited Dominion Beach, which was opened this past summer for the first time in a long time - five years (public access had been prohibited following pollution by untreated sewage).

Cayley takes her leaping littorally, with the Lingan thermal generating station silhouetted in the background.

The beautiful boardwalk in particular reminded me so strongly of the arrow of time, which only ever points toward the future.

We're all moving thataway, straight ahead, full steam.

She's still so young... Lawrence is ahead of her on his journey through spacetime, and I'm significantly ahead of them both, but sometimes I see things as if I'm actually living in multiple moments, which is perceptually the same as living in no discrete moments at all.

Most of Dominion Beach, including this boardwalk, was destroyed by a massive storm that hit right before Christmas.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia/story/2010/12/29/ns-dominion-beach-a-disaster-zone-councillor.html 

The newspapers don't yet have photo coverage, but of course someone posted a timely video on YouTube:

Same thermal generating station, very different day.
Screengrab courtesy of 1996beardeddragon's crude but revealing video as embedded below.

Time has passed, and the beach is now essentially gone, leaving a rocky erosive scar in its place.  I don't know what the future will bring, but this is the way things are in this moment.  As usual, there's much metaphorical fodder in all this, which I will continue to contemplate as the journey unfolds.

"At one time, thousands of people visited Dominion Beach every day during the summer, making it one of the most popular beaches in Nova Scotia."
-From the newspaper URL cited above.

"The past is right here, all around us - it's just that we can't access it."
-Researcher being interviewed on a TV science documentary produced earlier in 2010.  I didn't catch his name, but it might have been Sean Carroll (if I could go back in time, I'd find out for sure).