TrialsWhat a Difference 48 Hours Can Make

A cathedral, a crossing, and photographs taken in the last calm hours before Christchurch changed forever.

ChristchurchWorld Cruise 22 February 2011The Calm Before

The photographs did not know they were recording a before.

Reprint from the February 2011 World Cruise. This was the scene before the Christchurch earthquake and before we headed across the Tasman Sea.

Although I am a metric atheist, I now know what 15-metre waves can do. They cause mal de mer. Motion sickness affected everyone, including a seasoned veteran sailor like myself.

The Trials Equation Calm + Hindsight = A Photograph Rewritten The camera captured a place. Time changed what the image meant.

The Broken Heart

New Zealand’s Shattered Cathedral

What a difference 48 hours can make.

In my previous post, I compared Norway’s western fjords with New Zealand’s South Island using this scorekeeping system: Norway 5, New Zealand 3.5.

No disrespect. The number took on another meaning when a magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck Christchurch on 22 February 2011. We had missed the quake by hours. Stranger still was the photograph I had taken—exposing my heart before the city’s heart was broken.

I was among the last American visitors to enter ChristChurch Cathedral before the earthquake shattered this Kiwi architectural landmark.