Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Water


How much we need, how much we get, is such a delicate balance, like the colors in this picture. So far this season, just about every other day has been cloudy. Last summer, we had drought conditions, the thunderheads of anticipated storms passing just to the north, lightning within the clouds serving only to accentuate the heat.

This year, we would, if possible, share some of our rainfall with the people in the Southwest and Florida, to put out the brush fires and save their homes from burning.  Folks along the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers have, once again, been losing their homes to flooding. I'm sure they want the rivers to retreat to their banks. A lot of this can be attributed to our human conceits, attempting to impose controls that have, in many cases, reached up to bite us in the ass. Have we gone too far to ever achieve some sort of happy medium?

3 comments:

dive said...

That's a great photo, Speedway. I love the colours and textures.

In England we moan about the weather constantly but we have nothing like the extremes you guys have to put up with. We've currently got a heatwave with temperatures in the nineties and it's brought the country to a standstill (I was supposed to be in London today but the trains aren't running because of the heat). It's the same in the winter: the first snowflake to fall brings us to our knees. We are such a crap country at coping with our distinctly ordinary weather.

I watched this year's Mississippi floods with horror. Back at school (I'm now 52 so you can tell how long ago that was) we were taught that the attempt to control that mighty river with levées was misconceived and would result in tragedy and yet developers are still building houses on flood plains. It's the same with people who try to live in places where nature needs periodic burning and renewal.
You're right: we have gone too far and it seems we are dumb enough not to learn from past mistakes.

lin said...

this is gorgeous-- Linda

Julie said...

I tend to agree with Dive. We live amongst nature at our peril. We know it here in Australia. by all means live there, but don't expect an easy road to hoe!