![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Things Gone
Apr. 18th, 2006 04:56 amMoon and stars rode in on a wind that shook the trees and boomed in the canyon. The vast clarity of night was all the more startling for having followed so many nights of cloud. Deer passed by, hooves clicking, and I thought they danced. I was tempted to join them.
One hundred years ago, as of 6:12 AM PDT today (it was 5:12 AM PST then), the earth opened and, according to the legend, swallowed a cow in Marin County. Little was literally swallowed that day, but a way of life was battered to the point that it never recovered, and had as good as vanished into the bowels of the earth. There is a particularly Northern Californian nostalgia that was born from that rupture of the ground. Within three days, San Francisco, and a great deal else, was gone. That vanished city is a ghost haunting the region's memory. The nature of its end is a lurking reminder of transience.
One hundred years ago, as of 6:12 AM PDT today (it was 5:12 AM PST then), the earth opened and, according to the legend, swallowed a cow in Marin County. Little was literally swallowed that day, but a way of life was battered to the point that it never recovered, and had as good as vanished into the bowels of the earth. There is a particularly Northern Californian nostalgia that was born from that rupture of the ground. Within three days, San Francisco, and a great deal else, was gone. That vanished city is a ghost haunting the region's memory. The nature of its end is a lurking reminder of transience.
