Water follows gravity, and if trapped, rises to find a new outlet . . .
--Alan Watts, The Watercourse Way
Fallen leaves sometimes form barriers in small streams. In times of low water flow, the streams simply go around the barriers, since natural forces guide them in that way.
On the right side of the image above is a line of leaves that fell from trees months ago. But trees are ample on stream-banks, if they're allowed to stand where they grew naturally. So, a lot of leaves fall into streams in forested areas. They're one of many elements that guide the meandering course of creeks and rivers. The leaves seen above seem to be partly anchored in the gravel, and folded over slightly toward the flow of water, which, after passing the barrier of fallen foliage, widens a bit.
The leaf-dam above, just a few yards downstream from the earlier image, redirects the flow where the leaves happened to become lodged in the stream bed. The flowing water, forcefully squeezed into a narrower mini-channel on the left, drops a few inches and stirs up some foam on the pool below.
If the water were higher, it would surge over the top of the leaves, taking a few of them downstream with the weight and speed of the current. But now, the balance in forces allows the trees' leavings to guide the water around them.
Water doesn't fight that. As noted by Alan Watts in the epigraph, it simply finds a way around obstacles, going with nature's course. The straight lines in the minds of people are nonsense in nature.
When I was a small boy, my family lived in a house in a newly-developed post-WWII subdivision. The land was drained by a network of straight-line ditches, their banks reinforced with concrete to prevent any deviations. After all, the space was carefully planned, the lots sized with storm-water flow needs in mind. It never occurred to me then to wonder what was there before the concrete ditches. Now, I wonder what it might have looked like a few decades, or centuries, earlier.
No comments:
Post a Comment