Heroes Not Zombies

One of my most favourite activities is looking at water! Maybe you share that fascination and delight?

This first photo is from the Bracklinn Falls that I told you about. There’s a beautiful bridge over these falls and you often see people standing on the bridge, mesmerised by the sight and the sound of the tumbling waters.

I think when you allow yourself to be captured by the sight of water, you slow down and start to notice more…more colours, more shapes, more ever changing flow and movement.

I know a still photograph doesn’t do justice to the experience but look at how many colours there are in that image! So many more than we see “at first glance”.

This second photo is the Mediterranean. Again, see the colours! What a palette! Standing at the edge of a sea or an ocean is just as mesmerising, just as enchanting, just as meditative, as watching water in a waterfall.

This third photo is the River Forth in the town of my birth, Stirling, with the Wallace Monument in the background. Rivers are especially fascinating, not least because, as Herodotus said

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man

Isn’t it kind of mind boggling to think of a river as a “thing”, to give “it” a name, like we name cats, dogs, people we know? Because what exactly is this river we name? The water in it, which is never the same water, minute by minute? The banks, which change over days, weeks and years? When you look at the River Forth from Stirling Castle you see an astonishing trail of winding, looping water – loops which change over time? Is the river named because we can trace its origin in the hills and its destination in the sea?

Whatever we think a river, it’s clear “it” isn’t a fixed “thing” at all…..and that’s what I find fascinating about water. It’s always changing, always “becoming not being”.