The Natural World

No matter how powerful humankind thinks itself to be, the forces of nature have a way of asserting themselves, bringing with them both awe and terror. Fires and floods, tornadoes and droughts--all provide startling images that remind us of the power of the natural world. By comparison, our own efforts can seem puny: a railroad buckles, houses cower before an oncoming storm, fishermen desperately try to combat a flood in torrent. In the night sky, a light show beyond the wildest dreams of human engineers makes us primeval once more, gazing to the heavens with the same kind of wonder that the earliest of our kind must once have felt.