KURESSAARE, ESTONIA–When I was growing up the Soviet Union was simply an unchangeable fact of life. The United States had an implacable enemy, and we were locked in a struggle that would last my lifetime, at least. That lifetime was almost certainly going to be short, of course, because sooner or later someone would push the nuclear button and, in the words of the Kingston Trio, “… we will all be blown away”.
Thus it is very much an existential treat to have lived into my sixth decade and be able to walk through the remains of a secret Soviet missile base to get to the Suuriku Cliff locality this morning. The Evil Empire collapsed, the Baltic States were liberated, and massive overgrown concrete bunkers stand as evidence of a nearly unimaginable past only 20 years old. I am privileged as a geologist to be able to travel to such places and feel the turning points of history.
While constructing this Google Earth image of Tagalaht Bay to show the location of this Soviet base (one of dozens on the island, by the way), I saw something cool in the south: ancient shorelines. Saaremaa, like most of the Baltic region, is experiencing post-glacial isostatic rebound. The land is rising at least 2 mm per year (and in some places much more), so the sea is retreating. These shorelines are only a few thousand years old.
