Eye of chaos

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

- Friedrich Nietzsche -

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Last week we had a significant weather event resulting in a lot of rain in a short period of time. There was one minute of very large hail stones which caused widespread damage to property and crops, the latter mostly to the vineyards where grapes were knocked to the ground where they'd ultimately rot.

The damage ran into the millions of dollars but the true impact of that sixty seconds of hail won't be known for weeks to come.

I was fortunate enough to have sustained no damage to my home although I have friends whose cars were so badly hail-damaged they're being written off by insurers; they're the lucky ones though as many vehicle insurers here don't cover hail damage. Thousands of cars were damaged by huge dents in the panel-work and smashed glass.

Houses and businesses were flooded as the hail filled gutters preventing water to escape adequately and it subsequently flowed into ceilings and down internal walls. Electrical systems failed and commercial operator's stock was damaged - an all-round debacle. But that's nature.

Nature and all its chaotic beauty

It was a strange day as once that storm first front came through the day cleared up and we were graced with clear skies and sunshine. There was a second front on the way however I saw an opportunity to hike in the scrubland across the road from my house and I took it.

I find nature to be beautiful most of the time but at moments where extreme weather events occur it frightens me a little. It's the uncontrollable nature of it I think. I've been through a cyclone or two, extreme heat, massive dust storms and some other such things and they're uncomfortable, but there's beauty there also and that's what I found on my hike that day.

I only had my phone on me so my photos didn't come out so great but here's a few I took on between the first storm-front and the second as I hiked around a little.

The photo above and the following three were taken around the same time. I simply stood in the one spot as the clouds raced by and changed in shape along the way.

You'll see some colour creeping in which is due to this being the back end of the storm front which travelled west to east. It was around 18:00 (6pm) so the sun was low enough to add some colour to the trailing edge of the cloud formation and I was lucky that the phone camera picked it up.

I felt quite small standing in the middle of all of this chaos although, despite the wind buffeting me and a few spots of rain it felt really beautiful. I felt alive and energised, but luckily wasn't struck by one of the seventy seven thousand lightening strikes they recorded that day.

I imagined myself somewhere else in time and space, back at the beginning of all things perhaps. I imagined what our Neanderthal ancestors might think of such displays of nature during the Pleistocene Epoch, where they might find shelter and how such weather events impacted upon them; they had no property I guess so that wouldn't have been an issue.

The first and last photo were taken just as the storm rolled over completely hence the broken clouds and blue sky. I was also facing more easterly. The clouds were consuming the blue sky as the front rolled in and I was really struck by the contrast of the lower storm clouds and the near pure-white clouds billowing far higher; nature in juxtaposition.

As I stood beneath this spectacle looking almost straight up it seemed the sky was looking back down at me, and eye from above weighing and measuring the puny creature below it; that's what the first image above reminded me of.

I found beauty in nature that day, as I mostly do. It was chaotic, confused and tumultuous and I was left thinking about myself, the way I sometimes feel the same inside and how no matter how good or bad things are change is always constant.

Storms rage within me and yet I have sunny spring days made of flowers, babbling brooks and breezes which carry the scents of hope and happiness...I guess, like nature, we're all juxtaposed at times and it's how we weather the storms within and without, and embrace the beautiful days that defines who we are and what we will receive in life.