From Ashes to Sand

We walked down the beach after the great mudslide that took away so many homes and lives. The sea was as dark as coffee, the sand a field of broken dreams.

You’re used to seeing lumber in the yards when you build your house into a home. It sits, full of potential, straight and clean, smelling of pine and fir freshly cut from the deep green forest far to the north.

Looking at a finely milled door shattered and ripped, a door knob of fine bronze at rest in the shifting sand. All that remains now is wood, plastic, and flotsam. Large beams, scattered like Pick-Up Sticks, once created the open spaces for the dinners and dances at parties that celebrated loved ones on occasions and places for mourning loved ones lost.

We build knowing full well that what we create may eventually fall away. But disasters compress time and bring the future into the present for our eyes to see. What can we think of this that happens, are we to accept that it is all futile? We carry on because that is what we do. We do it for those moments of bliss and love and beauty that we hope will never die, to be passed on to each generation into eternal time.