Wild boar wash-water
Monsoon season in the tropics can be an impressive affair depending on your perspective. To most, it’s just another period of the year where washed clothes don’t dry, feet keep getting wet and soft fields of mould develop on just about everything. But when one watches the rain gauge daily, it can be mind boggling how much water actually cycles through this washing machine of an atmosphere that surrounds us. Rainy season can certainly feel like a never ending wash cycle.
The tropical wet forest that is Sinharaja can attest to its wetness in having three to five metres (I repeat, metres) of rain dumped on it annually. That’s impressive to me since I stand just over a diminutive 1.6 m at sea level. These past few months standing in torrential rain have given me opportunities to ponder the power of water. As I watched the rivulets running past my boots I thought about how much material gets shunted into our waterways; all the mud, leaves and unfortunate invertebrates being swept away into suddenly existing streamlets. I marvelled at how quickly a crystal clear stream would suddenly turn into a swirling swoosh of dirty, muddy wild boar wash-water. And I thought about how, with all this rain, the mountainside that I stood upon still existed. Through all the millennia of thundering rain, how do tropical landmasses not just wash away?
Then I realised that most of what is washed away is not the mountain itself but what gets laid upon it by the thick blankets of vegetation. With the high temperatures and high biodiversity, I’ve seen whole fallen trees turned into soil in a matter of months. And then completely wash away in a few weeks of rain; to become the water in rivers and then the sea and to be rained down upon its seedlings in the next monsoon season.
Ahh the cycle of life manifests itself again. I apologise if this is a recurring theme in my blurbs.
I apologise for the pun as well.
So for those like me, who follow the paths of least resistance, remember a great force of nature like the rain does exactly the same thing.
After all, aren’t WE made up of 70% water?
So as I stand under my umbrella being pelted by a thousand dead trees, I sing those classic songs dedicated to the great solvent-
‘Blame it on the rain, yeah yeah…’
Monsoon season in the tropics can be an impressive affair depending on your perspective. To most, it’s just another period of the year where washed clothes don’t dry, feet keep getting wet and soft fields of mould develop on just about everything. But when one watches the rain gauge daily, it can be mind boggling how much water actually cycles through this washing machine of an atmosphere that surrounds us. Rainy season can certainly feel like a never ending wash cycle.
The tropical wet forest that is Sinharaja can attest to its wetness in having three to five metres (I repeat, metres) of rain dumped on it annually. That’s impressive to me since I stand just over a diminutive 1.6 m at sea level. These past few months standing in torrential rain have given me opportunities to ponder the power of water. As I watched the rivulets running past my boots I thought about how much material gets shunted into our waterways; all the mud, leaves and unfortunate invertebrates being swept away into suddenly existing streamlets. I marvelled at how quickly a crystal clear stream would suddenly turn into a swirling swoosh of dirty, muddy wild boar wash-water. And I thought about how, with all this rain, the mountainside that I stood upon still existed. Through all the millennia of thundering rain, how do tropical landmasses not just wash away?
Then I realised that most of what is washed away is not the mountain itself but what gets laid upon it by the thick blankets of vegetation. With the high temperatures and high biodiversity, I’ve seen whole fallen trees turned into soil in a matter of months. And then completely wash away in a few weeks of rain; to become the water in rivers and then the sea and to be rained down upon its seedlings in the next monsoon season.
Ahh the cycle of life manifests itself again. I apologise if this is a recurring theme in my blurbs.
I apologise for the pun as well.
So for those like me, who follow the paths of least resistance, remember a great force of nature like the rain does exactly the same thing.
After all, aren’t WE made up of 70% water?
So as I stand under my umbrella being pelted by a thousand dead trees, I sing those classic songs dedicated to the great solvent-
‘Blame it on the rain, yeah yeah…’
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