The edge of the land, where it meets the edge of the sea, is a front line, the beginning of both worlds and an end of each. It is easy to see this as a metaphor—an old, old metaphor—the waves chewing and spitting out rock and sand, the land stretching out mats of résistant marram grass, marching tangles of mangrove and flat formation after flat formation of saltmarsh, rivers firing silt, fallen trees wedging, blockading and forming islands, a tapestry of constantly altering, soft boundaries—boundaries which mean something on a human map but are simply as it is to the animals, plants and all other life which call this narrow ecological corridor home.
The Front Line
The Front Line
The Front Line
The edge of the land, where it meets the edge of the sea, is a front line, the beginning of both worlds and an end of each. It is easy to see this as a metaphor—an old, old metaphor—the waves chewing and spitting out rock and sand, the land stretching out mats of résistant marram grass, marching tangles of mangrove and flat formation after flat formation of saltmarsh, rivers firing silt, fallen trees wedging, blockading and forming islands, a tapestry of constantly altering, soft boundaries—boundaries which mean something on a human map but are simply as it is to the animals, plants and all other life which call this narrow ecological corridor home.