Life and Death

Air. Water. Warmth. They make life possible.
But they are also the food of the monsters that come down from the thunder and stride the earth without mercy.

These images were taken today outside Piedmont, Oklahoma.  But no photograph or video can capture the feeling of fearful wonder at the power evidenced by the broken landscape.

Stately trees and fields of ripening wheat are stripped of leaf and grain, leaving only spindly stalks that point like accusing fingers toward the source of their doom.

PS - I found it an interesting coincidence that a town called Piedmont is also a key site in The Andromeda Strain, a novel about a form of life that transforms energy directly into matter.