by ButterflyEffect

Twenty-five years ago, hardwoods and pines often thrived alongside our marshy shore. Now not. It is still hard for me to believe that a departure this big began in my lifetime. I’ve encountered so many of these bare and lifeless forms that I have come to think of them as a series of memorials, a supersized Christo installation that spans the entire country from the Louisiana bayou all the way up here to this remote corner of the Gulf of Maine. Together they commemorate the tipping point: the moment the salt water began to move in. And now that sea levels are rising more quickly than they have in the past twenty-eight centuries, an even bigger change is happening: the ground itself has begun to rot.