By Lin Jensen, photos by Karen Laslo

Music by Led Zepplin

Karen is often found afield with a camera in hand. Yet recent storms brought down more trees than she could possibly photograph. They lay strewn like fallen giants on the paths and roadways of Bidwell Park; they crushed the roofs of houses and thrust up great slabs of sidewalk. While Karen couldn’t record it all, she managed nonetheless to capture images enough to show the inexorable and sudden force of wind and rushing water.

There’s no point in arguing with the weather; you’ll find it totally indifferent to your wishes and preferences. The rain does not rain for our sakes nor cease for our sakes. Nor do trees germinate or grow or topple and die because of any concern for our wellbeing. Nature is its own life and force over which we have no control but can only endure and at best admire. But it is possible to tamper with mechanisms that influence the weather, which we humans have done and for which we are now reaping the consequences. In a series of storms such as those of these past days, we get a small sense of what nature is capable of, and a measure of how little recourse we have to ward off the very forces we have set in motion.

Look at these photographs with an eye of consequence, and know that these images are but a fraction of what might be in store for us. Natural forces are both wondrous and threatening. What Karen has shown through the lenses of her camera these past days, awakens us to a humility and reverence for the forces of nature, and turns us toward an essential harmonization with our native surroundings that constitutes our only true life on this planet.