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Oxbow
Oxbow
In 1967, mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot posed a deceptively simple question: How long is the coast of Britain? The answer, he found, depended entirely on the length of your ruler. Measured by kilometer, you gloss over every cove and inlet. Switch to the centimeter and the coastline expands. Tighten further to the single sediment, freshly deposited by the crashing waves and its expanse appears infinite—suggesting there is no true length, only the resolution at which you choose to look.- Expanded temporally, the same phenomenon appears. The closer you draw to a moment in history, the more complexity it reveals: more actors, more competing truths. Zoom out and the flood that cut the Connecticut River from its bend becomes a mere footnote in geological time. Zoom in, the afternoon that reshaped a man's understanding of self and his system of belief. Every event contains more events. Every cause contains more causes. There is no true beginning to the Oxbow, only the scale at which you choose to begin measuring, and the tools you've been given to do so.