Awestruck

There are some sights which are so beautiful, so wondrous, that they leave you staring at them open-mouthed. That's the effect the picture below has on me. This pure white wilderness, stretching as far as the eye can see, seemingly untouched by man, is a scene of absolute peace and calm. You can almost feel yourself breathing in the exhilaratingly cold fresh air deep into your lungs. The scene has a reassuringly permanent and unchanging quality about it. How long it will be before the hand of man brings an end to its changeless permanence is anyone's guess but that will be a sad day.

I feel a similar but different effect when I look at this second photo. The similarity is in the clean fresh purity of the scene, the difference is the movement taking place here. A powerful churning sea flows between the ice. You can almost sense the force of the body of water pounding against the mass of the ice floes. There is beauty here as in the previous image but there is also motion, force, energy. This scene does not have the reassuring permanence of the other one. There is no calm here. It is just a matter of time before the ice is broken up, worn down, and swallowed by the water.

Two powerfully striking scenes, both awesome in their own way. The first is a vast open landscape that transmits an air of permanence and total tranquillity. The second, equally awesome, is a depiction of the powerful forces of Nature, the foaming sea tirelessly pounding the ice that we know will eventually yield to the surging waters. In both instances we are awestruck by the beauty and energy of the natural world, a world which we are now all too aware is under threat from man's deleterious activities from one end of the planet to the other.