Ephemeral Beaches

The pendulum and the archaeologist

Huntington was an archaeologist in the year 2054. He mostly lived in his electric van-vehicle as he traveled down the western coastline of North America. He had traveled that coastline many years before as a young man. That was a very different coastline.

Now, in 2054, he was traveling the coastline as an archaeologist. In the last few years the sea level had begun receding again. Countless towns and cities around the world had “gone under the sea” in recent decades as the sea level kept rising with each new year. So much was swallowed up — and was on the verge of being forgotten. But now, thanks to the countless volcanic eruptions the climate was changing once again.

An archaeologist’s fantasy is for water to recede and unveil a relic of previous times. So many archaeological discoveries have been made when the water recedes. Those urban centers of humankind that were lost in previous decades were now beginning to resurface. There was much to discover about how the human populations reacted to their world drowning.

Huntington had received a small grant from the university he was connected with to study what the receding ocean was quickly uncovering. His electric van-vehicle was filled with expensive equipment. The economic endowment and his scientific curiosity, however, were not the only driving forces in his journey down the coastline.

As a child and as a young adult, he had once lived in one of those coastal communities that had once been above water. It was like a huge chunk of his own history had been submerged and this archaeological field trip was also a chance for him to retrieve that part of himself that had also been submerged.

It was both discovery and re-discovery for Huntington. The great thing was that he was getting paid for it.

On his trip south, Huntington had stopped at numerous points where towns and cities used to be but were now under water. In his electric van-vehicle he had scuba equipment which he used to explore those lost cities. A two-person film crew, with more equipment, followed behind him on his trip down the coast.

With scuba gear attached, Huntington and his crew would swim underwater through these cities that were above water only a few decades before. The past was relegated to a whole new dimension. It was as if the past had been liquefied. Instead of birds flying about there were now fish. Sunlight was now so filtered that all of reality seemed in shadow.

Everything seemed in a state of suspended animation. It was both dead and alive. It was both real and unreal. It was like a Van Gogh painting that was melting.

It was an exciting opportunity for Huntington but it was also a nightmarish trip into the recesses of his past. He remembered being in so many of these towns and cities so long ago in his youth.

Huntington planned it so that he, in his electric van-vehicle, would always be twelve to twenty-four hours ahead of the secondary van with the film crew. He wanted to get a feel for the area before film production began. He wanted to be alone to experience the vibrations of the locale before those vibrations were touched and recorded. He wanted to experience the reality above the water before he put the diving equipment on.

He wanted to experience his own feelings before he opened the Pandora’s Box of human history.

It was all so personal to him. His youth was spent up and down this coast — that is, the coast that used to be….

Huntington had gotten up earlier than normal in order to get an even farther stretch beyond his film crew the morning they were coming to the community in which he grew up that was now mostly underwater. He needed some time to walk the beach above that community. He needed time to replay some very important memories.

Where the beach now was, was where “Lover’s Lane” used to be. As a teenager he would drive with friends “up” to Lover’s Lane. It was not just a place for young lovers to meet and make out but it was also where all the big outdoor parties were held. There would always be lines of parked cars, some with young lovers making out, and some empty, their occupants gathered around bonfires alongside the hillside. Everyone had a view down upon the lights of the town. The ocean was always beyond that. There was the ocean, the town, and there was the ledge up on the hills where the young people partied and where they briefly seemed “above” it all.

But now Lover’s Lane was the beach. The city below had slipped into the ocean. Instead of a line of parked cars there was now just a sandy beach. Instead of parked cars and partying teenagers, there was now just seagulls for whom a moving shoreline was just a trivial and inconsequential change. There is a profound difference between land and sea but the air above that seems to have remained the same.

To the birds it was just moving lines, a pendulum swinging back and forth between ages.

As Huntington walked the beach — which used to be lover’s lane — he looked out over the water. The old Stancroft office building poked up out of the water. At six stories high, it had been the tallest building in town. Now only a little less than half of it could be seen. That building and the very tops of a couple of church steeples were all that could be seen above the water.

Later in the day he would be swimming underwater to see the rest of the town. Huntington knew it would look very differently but he also knew many memories would resurface in his mind. Having seen the underwater ruins of several other communities, he had an idea what the experience would be like but it would surely be a more intense experience since he had grown up in this town.

If it was not for the Stancroft building and the church steeples his walk along the beach would be no different than a walk along any beach. Like sentinels protruding from the past, those objects filled him with both dread and excitement.

Huntington experienced a kaleidoscope of emotions as he walked under the canopy of seagulls that seemed to be calling those emotions forth.

As he turned his gaze away from the water and back to the sandy beach he suddenly saw someone walking toward him. It was a woman. As he focused in on her he realized that it was HER — except an older version of her.

They had walked the beach so many times together — the old beach. They were both very young then; just teenagers. They were very much in love. They dreamed of having a house together on the beach but life pulled them apart. He had not seen her in many, many years.

Huntington stopped walking. His heart was now beating rapidly as SHE approached him. He then turned to look out over the water again.

And as he turned his gaze back to land she was gone.

Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved.