Overcoming old ways often means not only deconstruction, but to destroy what has been. This can be very disturbing, unsettling for most, as humans like consistency and routines. Even pets don’t like change, – just move a chair in your living room, and you’ll be punished by panicking eyes for a week until it finally gets accepted.

Deconstruction can also be an act of setting one free of old restraints. With a positive open mind, it will create room for improvement, or more visionary, the total remake into something brand new. In art, philosophy, even ecology, this idea mirrors how decay feeds new growth — the forest floor becoming fertile again. In our temperate climate Northwestern forests, mushrooms (Turkey Tail) do much of the heavy work of deconstructing a fallen log.

Winters at the Pacific coast in Washington State are not for the faint hearted. Massive old trees are bounced around by the ocean and slowly deconstructed. This stranded old cedar at the beach shows now beautiful structure and color, exposed layer by layer by wind and water.
Even man-made structures eventually give way. At Cape Disappointment, Battery 247 was a part of Fort Canby, fortifying the Pacific coast and to defend the entrance to the Columbia River.

Nothing is forever. Change is the only constant in our lives, ditto for our threatened democratic Republic. Although, I am an eternal hopeful, but know it will become different. I am looking for the proverbial Silver Lining once we come out of this period of deconstruction. Be ready, because it is on all of us to create something better for all.