When I was 21 years old, I had a couple of weeks to kill between graduating from college and moving out west for graduate school. As in, there were literally four weeks between graduation and when I had to report for class...not enough time to get a job or really do anything, but just a little too much time to just sit on my hands. So, I packed up my Jeep and set out on a 3 week road trip up the east coast and over to the upper Midwest before heading back down to Atlanta.

I kept a journal...most of which is not worth recounting, but I do remember writing something at Niagara Falls about the awesome power of water. Specifically about the unimaginable amount of energy contained in it as it fell several hundred feet and dispersed into droplets that I could feel on my face a hundred yards away.

I thought about that today as I watched this video of the tsunami hitting Japan, possibly the scariest thing I've ever seen not in person. (There were a couple of lightening strikes in the open desert that were really too close for comfort, that I count as the scariest things I've ever actually seen...and felt, and smelled.) This water wasn't falling, but rising. Relentlessly, mercilessly, rising. And really, its power is no less awesome.

To know nature is to know true humility.