<< Back to Day 15, Rhode Is.
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Crossing the Hudson
There is a five-story clock, an ad for Colgate, on the Jersey side of the river. The numbers and hands glow red at night, to be seen from across the river. As we departed from the shore, that clock was the only landmark visible behind us in the storm. We watched the clock as it grew smaller, as we left behind the world where time still had meaning. It was 2:20am.
In front of us loomed the dust cloud, huge and ghostly, behind the darkened buildings of the waterfront. The World Financial Center, now the tallest buildings on the south end, were dwarfed by the cloud of steam, smoke, dust and debris coming from The Pit. The power was still yet to be restored to the south end of the city, and these flood lights were the only power and light source the rescue workers had with which to find any sign of life.
The remaining structures of the World Financial Center are over forty stories tall, and formidable enough in their own right. These buildings would be the giants in any other city than New York. It was hard to believe that the Twin Towers once stood over twice the size of these other surrounding buildings.
No one we've spoken to can look at the skyline and remember exactly where they stood. The skyline has changed dramatically, but you always knew that those buildings would never change. A friend stated that even though he'd been in the city when it happened, had cried with the news, and knew they were gone, he still comes up out of the subway and looks for them to get his bearings. He still looks.
We approached that new skyline in silence. No one on the boat could speak. It didn't feel like the city that we know and love. It was more like an uncharted island, isolated from the rest of the world. It felt like Jurassic Park, cut off from communications with the rest of the world, on an island where the dangers are many and huge and unknown. It felt like Planet of the Apes, returning to a place you once knew, though it's now thousands of years old, changed entirely yet vaguely familiar.
You maniacs... you blew it all up.
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the trip so far... contact kevin & aimee
