Future Contours
Walk along a beach, and despite the ebb and flow of the tide and slipping of sand, it’s hard to imagine the coast line shift and start and refashion itself into something new. The solidity of a landmass is most apparent at the edge, or at a seam, when you can imagine it shifting in your head, but your body refuses to believe that the ground beneath your feet is going anywhere.
Go outside and look up at the outline of a tree’s canopy against the sky. Year after year, the leaves fall out and come back, and we think it looks the same, but ultimately the outline of the tree is a tenuous thing. As the earth moves forward in time, the land we know will remain, but the surface will become unrecognizable. Well, at least unmapped.
I wonder if there are any bored cartographers out there who want to fast forward hundreds of thousands of years, pull out a fresh piece of paper, and fill it with contours and lines of where things ended up.
