The Weight of Salt

We build things to last. We drive piles into the seabed, we bolt iron to wood, we believe in the permanence of our own industry. Then we leave. The sea does not care for our intentions. It waits. It works with the salt and the tide, slowly reclaiming the space we claimed for ourselves. There is a specific kind of dignity in this surrender. To stand against the elements until you are no longer a structure, but a memory of one. We are all, in some sense, waiting for the water to finish its work. We measure our lives in years, but the coast measures them in grains of sand. What remains when the purpose is stripped away? Is the ruin a failure, or is it finally becoming part of the landscape again?

Cameron Cope has captured this quiet surrender in the image titled Pier Ruins. The wood seems to hold the history of the tide within its grain. Does it look like an end to you, or a beginning?