| Dylan Ehler had one hazel eye and one that was half-hazel, half-blue. As Katherine Laidlaw writes, "The only words the 3-year-old could say were 'mama' and 'dada,' but he found other ways to speak. He'd taken to sliding his hand into his dad's and, with a gentle tug, leading him around the house that way." One day his mom dropped him off for a few hours at his grandmother's house, in Truro, Nova Scotia. And Dylan disappeared. Soon, his rain boots were found in the creek behind her house. The thing is, the landscape around this part of Nova Scotia—near an offshoot of the Bay of Fundy—is governed by the highest tides on the planet. "The Bay of Fundy is a funnel of ferocity," Laidlaw writes. "Peace is thin on the ground. Most oceans, on average, have a tidal range of 3 feet. The range in Fundy is 53. Imagine the force created by the pounding hooves of 24 million charging horses, and still Fundy's tides are stronger." But that didn't seem to matter to the hordes of self-appointed sleuths who joined the search for Dylan, only to surface what they felt was evidence that the parents were the culprits. As we've seen so many times before, the people on social media turned—with their own funnel of ferocity. Laidlaw's beautiful story gives you a glimpse of the pain that can spread throughout a community when tragedy strikes and people can't see the full picture. Maria Streshinsky | Executive Editor, WIRED |
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