Changes

What is “permanent” depends on your point of view.

Our consultants run for exercise along the bike path and pedestrian trail next to the Potomac River, here on the Virginia side.  Across the river is the District of Columbia and, farther downstream, Maryland.  The river is wide enough at this point to be a major barrier, and standing on one shore no one is likely to be confused about which side he’s on.

But on the Virginia shore, several yards back from the water, there are concrete blocks marking District of Columbia land.  Their presence goes back to an historical oddity: when the District was created, it was given control over the whole of the Potomac, right up to the Virginia shoreline.  And the river has changed its course over the years enough to leave the markers definitely inland on the Virginia side.  Rivers, or at least their particular courses, are ephemeral things.  The Mississippi has changed course even more, enough to require a small industry in map-making to show State boundaries as it wanders.  Had it not been for the determined efforts of the Army Corps of Engineers, it’s possible that New Orleans would by now have been abandoned entirely by that river.

That got us to thinking about how things that can seem permanent are actually so only from a certain point of view.  The suburb one of our consultants grew up in had trees, a few in just about every yard, but the view of and from the houses was largely open.  He went back a number of years later and the trees dominated the landscape: they were twice as high as they had been, shading the houses and cutting off the long views.  It was a different place.  “Permanent” things from his boyhood were those that changed little over, say, a decade.

An even more restricted view of “permanent” comes from students.  They will likely see very little change in their High Schools during their four years’ term, but coming back after college will find some different teachers and different ways of doing things.  The institutions of their university over four or five years will seem fixed and immovable (sometimes frustratingly so).  The university itself will emphasize tradition, partly as a fixed point of reference during a time when students’ lives are in great flux, partly because students with strong emotional ties to the place will be better donors later.  But come back after ten years and buildings will be gone, the familiar restaurants will have changed ownership and format, the older professors will have retired and new faces fill the halls.

Much of modern life is obviously, egregiously transient: fashions in clothes and slang, models of car and smartphone, movies and TV shows.  But the “permanent” background is also changing; your favorite part could be gone on your next visit.