Upon The White Cliffs Of Dover

When I woke up this morning, I wasn’t planning on writing this. Work is all consuming, and when it’s not my novel is. I need to put some finishing touches on a family trip to France that is suddenly, amazingly right around the corner. And my dog needs a surprise visit to the vet. Plus, it was inauguration day Monday which is all I will say on that topic.

Not that I’m complaining.

Despite it being negative nine degrees in the lovely Chicagoland area, my coffee is still warm. Despite an ear infection, Lois is her happy, lovely, puppy self–she even slept in today, a welcome surprise. My wife is as wonderful as ever, and I am privileged enough to have both my parents still just a phone call away.

All to say, things aren’t bad, simply busy. So, I wasn’t planning on writing this.

Then I brushed my teeth like a normal person and stared at the picture which serves as my entry (travel collages in the bathroom, totally normal person thing), and I changed my mind.

I changed.

When presented with the proper stimulus, I underwent the conscious act of switching my decision from not writing this, to writing this.

I have a lot of travel pictures. This one is my favorite. When people ask me, “why do you like this picture,” I push my proverbial glasses up my nose, kick my feet back, and respond, “well, let me tell you all of world history in one picture,” with all of my good, midwestern sensibilities.

Because it is the history of the world in a single picture*.

*I’m obligated by my own humility to admit this is certainly a gross oversimplification, but I would also welcome the challenge to “seven degrees of Kevin Bacon,” any peoples, places, or events to this picture in the comments.

This picture is taken from atop the Keep at Dover Castle on the south coast of England.

From the first migrations across the lowlands of Doggerland to listening for Soviet submarines, these white cliffs have stood vigil to the very shaping of human society.

From atop the keep built in the twelfth century, we can see the remains of the Roman Lighthouse, possibly the oldest building in England. It stands proudly; a memento to the foundational forces now only memories, like an old band poster in your older brother’s room. We can see the Saxon era church, rebuilt during the reign of Queen Victoria nearly a thousand years later. We can see fortifications built to defend against Napoleon, then converted to mount guns aimed against the Luftwaffe. And across the Channel, we can see, on this wonderfully illuminated day, the coast of Normandy and France beyond, those lands most of the defenses were built for, now connected by the Chunnel rumbling somewhere in the depths below.

And I’m dumbfounded every single time I look at this. Sure, there’s places in America that immerse you in a longer view of history: Boston, Cahokia, St. Augustine, but it amounts to comparing a pair of binoculars to the Hubble Telescope.

Castles crumble. Walls collapse. Dynasties rise. Regimes fall.

Yet here, atop the cliffs of Dover, stands a perfect time capsule, preserved in all its glory.

It’s so very simple to think, when your city has only had one name and your capital has had only one Capitol, that what is is what will always be. And it’s made so, so much easier to believe that when all that came before is forgotten, erased, and suppressed.

But I keep this picture close, not only because of its beauty, and of its curiosity, but because it reminds me.

It reminds me that centuries old enemies can join hands.

It reminds me that seeing the world, even places you thought you knew, will always garner new insights.

It reminds me that things change.

And it reminds me that a shining castle on a hill only stands as long as the men and women defending it change with it.

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A/N:

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