The Power of Nature

A lot of my blogging this past month has been connected to major flooding in my area of upstate NY that occurred September 7 and 8, because the damage was so powerful.  We in this valley have been taught a lot of lessons by nature.  The most important one: how powerless we are. But we can pick our selves up and strive to bring our lives back to normal, the same as so many others in our country have had to do this year. 

Today, on a philosophical morning, I have these emotions:

1.  Gratitude.  My spouse and I both interact at our jobs with people who lost their homes.  We have neighbors who lost so much more than we did.

2.  An appreciation of "The Things You Take For Granted".  We left on vacation with an intact neighborhood.  We returned to - well, something totally different, and we weren't even able to get back into our neighborhood on the first night.  A curfew we didn't know about had fallen and a deputy sheriff turned us away.  We were suddenly homeless in our own neighborhood. What a feeling that was.

3.  Interdependence.  So many people had to depend on the kindness of others. Just blocks from us we saw  people who set up impromptu lunch stands.  The person who posted a large "Everything Will Be All Right" sign on the side of his flooded out business, encouraged his neighbors perhaps more than he will ever know.

4.  Trying to be good to ourselves and being good to others.  We don't know what others we interact with on a daily basis have been through.

5.  Seeing the best and the worst in others. Sadly, some of the stories do not highlight the best of human nature.

I, finally, wanted to share some pictures of a beautiful park in our area, Otsiningo Park,where I take some of my wildflower pictures.  These pictures were taken two weeks after the flood and show the forces of nature that were at work on those days in September.

Building knocked off foundation.

It's hard to tell without a scale, but that plastic thing hanging from a tree was above our heads.

No picnics for the rest of this year.

Another no-picnic zone.

Thank you for allowing me to share this moment with you.