On the Topic of Nature

The storm in this case isn't metaphorical. It's in reference to a legitimate series of storms that ripped up the coastline of the town where I live. The beach near our house was pounded into obliteration, with stuff tossed ashore well inland.

We took a walk to survey the sights and were humbled by our own human weakness in the face of the ocean's power. I saw a few seals that had been dropped from the ocean and lay among the rocks, frozen in the snow. A sad sight. Less poignant was the sight of a golfball that had been neatly dropped inside a perfect-sized hole in a battered board. Not sure how the golfball managed to find the hole in all the chaos, but it provided a neat bit of symmetry and order, which felt like a relief.

With the (mistaken) sense of control technology gives us, there is no substitute for a walk through nature, unmediated by Instagram and whatever else we use to edit what it is we're seeing into something manageable. Nature provides reminders that life, no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves otherwise, is not manageable.