DOERING: Earth is a planet in motion where water carves deep canyons and rock itself turns to liquid. And that got Living on Earth’s Explorer in Residence, Mark Seth Lender thinking.

Water! Falls!
© 2023 Mark Seth Lender
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There is something about waterfalls, and volcanoes, that makes me think of them in the same way. Why? It took me a while. When I pose this as a question people say, it’s the Power. Which is true but that applies equally to the sea, especially in storm when the waves are crashing. And all that violence. But I don’t think Ocean/Volcano, or Ocean/Waterfall holds together in the same way as Waterfall/Volcano.

Waterfall/Volcano is different.

Rock is dense and cold and solid and it sinks. It stays put. Water is forgiving and pliant. It turns into mist. It returns, as rain. In a waterfall, it is the water that sinks. That falls. Not the rock over which it cascades. In a volcano, rock instead of being solid and cool is molten and hot. Ejected, into the stratosphere, rock defies its very nature!

That’s the relationship. Water that falls like something solid; rock that is liquid and flings itself into the air.

When I look at a waterfall it brings that opposition in mind, for me. Naming, saying “Waterfall” all-at-once, like that, that loses these oppositions and contradictions. Instead think, “Water, Falls.”

DOERING: That’s Living on Earth’s Explorer in Residence, Mark Seth Lender.