After days of heavy rain and south-west winds that stripped the snow from the fields and woods I wandered down to the River Spey to watch the swollen surging grey water. The riverside path was under water in places and the river was on the verge of spilling over into neighbouring meadows. The power of the water felt immense, great dark swells heaving and pitching in a rush to the sea. Watching the fast moving river I felt disorientated as my eyes and brain tried to adapt to the constantly changing blurred water. There were flood warnings for the lower Spey, closer to the sea, and I knew there had been floods further south around the town of Perth, where several rivers pour down from the Highlands to converge on lowland plains. And of course for days the news has been of terrible floods in Australia, Brazil and the Philippines. Standing on the edge of the Spey in spate I could well understand how fast rain and snowmelt can turn a life-giving river into a fearsome threat and that thinking we can always tame and control nature is hubris.
Photo Info: The River Spey surging below the Old Spey Bridge, Grantown-on-Spey, January 17, 2011. Sony NEX-5, Sony 18-55 lens@36mm, 1/20@f8, ISO 400, raw files processed in Lightroom 3.
Hi Chris,
ReplyDeleteI'm glad we cannot control the weather. When we had the heavy snow last month and travel became difficult I was impressed that the weather had such an impact on our lifes and we were helpless to do anything to change it.
Alastair