All's Quiet on the Northeastern Front

As we drove into Ishinomaki we sort of honestly questioned what we could do to help this town that obviously didn't seem to have been impacted much by the...

An empty foundation against the 

backdrop of homes still standing

The transition into the devastation was slow.  It snuck up on us.  That wasn't nice.  Observing with wild abandon, cameras, iPhones, iPads all clicking away or rolling with video, capturing the change in landscape that we had been waiting to witness.  Not knowing that we had not seen anything yet.  It is hard to gauge and to put in perspective that which you have not witnessed first hand.  To this point we had no idea, no perspective of the diversity of the wreckage we were about to see just from this town and its surroundings.

A building still standing, serves as a backdrop to a house or business (we could not tell) completely demolished.  How did one stand and the other literally wash away?  But that building that still stands...  It provides still a symbol of civilization, of society, of economy, that we will not be washed away in totality.

And we see images and witness carnage most of us have never seen before (outside of the CNN or a YouTube video) and roll through streets, over bridges, through tunnels, up winding mountain roads - perilous from the earthquake damage - and down into a town built into a small bay...

No, it used to be a town.  I know now why such experiences haunt people for a lifetime.

The vista of what was once Ooginohama

It took us Oregonians to snap out of the similar surroundings - "Gee, this looks a lot like the Oregon coast." Amongst the trees and at the foot of a rising forest in the flats of the bay's shoreline was nothing but broken, split, torn, ripped, shredded, twisted, ravaged construction strewn serenely across the landscape. 

Ooginohama, that was the name.  It takes a bit to learn, but once you do, you will never forget.  And so we laced our boots up a bit tighter, pulled the gloves on more firmly, and prepared to spend the day doing something, anything to help get this town, these people, back into a position where they can start to rebuild.  Looking out at the vista there was no ability to rebuild.  Three months after the event the scope of the recovery is still evident and a daunting task.  But every task must start somewhere, and ours started at a little creek and forest below the local elementary school.  And it would bring balance to us, it would be our Yin to the Yang that our eyes had just witnessed.

More to come, but for those who can't wait, here are more pictures of the day in Ishinomaki on Flickr