God and Nature 2025 #4
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When Wind Meets Water
By Cheryl Grey Bostrom
At the western edge of Los Angeles County, the weekend storm surge ruins piers, overruns sandbags, and breaches bulwarks. Hordes of locals, photographers, and holiday visitors like me gawk spellbound as onshore winds shear the tops of steep waves and loft spray into the air in a shimmering aerosol known as spindrift.
It’s quite a show. Even diehard surfers peel off wetsuits and stare from the beach.
Terms like Beaufort Scale and spume droplet production come to mind as I observe. Through my camera lens, the waves reveal their architecture: dark water lifting, thinning, then fracturing. Where the peaks of those waves rupture, tiny droplets escape in a fine spray—jet droplets and film droplets, both formed when a crest collapses and shreds.
There’s an exact instant before a wave falls when wind captures those droplets and vaults them skyward. Momentum transfer, I recall—when energy passes from air to water and water to air. I’m mesmerized by the timing.
And I’m convinced that I’m experiencing more than wild waves. Nature’s speaking again, I think. Illustrating heart truths, straight from Creator Jesus.
I note how peaking waves surrender. How, right when the wave releases, spindrift lifts from the crest, rising higher than the wave ever could on its own.
True for us? Doesn’t holy Breath raise us up when we surrender?
Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.-- James 4:10
My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. --2 Corinthians 12:9
By Cheryl Grey Bostrom
At the western edge of Los Angeles County, the weekend storm surge ruins piers, overruns sandbags, and breaches bulwarks. Hordes of locals, photographers, and holiday visitors like me gawk spellbound as onshore winds shear the tops of steep waves and loft spray into the air in a shimmering aerosol known as spindrift.
It’s quite a show. Even diehard surfers peel off wetsuits and stare from the beach.
Terms like Beaufort Scale and spume droplet production come to mind as I observe. Through my camera lens, the waves reveal their architecture: dark water lifting, thinning, then fracturing. Where the peaks of those waves rupture, tiny droplets escape in a fine spray—jet droplets and film droplets, both formed when a crest collapses and shreds.
There’s an exact instant before a wave falls when wind captures those droplets and vaults them skyward. Momentum transfer, I recall—when energy passes from air to water and water to air. I’m mesmerized by the timing.
And I’m convinced that I’m experiencing more than wild waves. Nature’s speaking again, I think. Illustrating heart truths, straight from Creator Jesus.
I note how peaking waves surrender. How, right when the wave releases, spindrift lifts from the crest, rising higher than the wave ever could on its own.
True for us? Doesn’t holy Breath raise us up when we surrender?
Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.-- James 4:10
My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. --2 Corinthians 12:9
Pacific Northwest naturalist and photographer Cheryl Grey Bostrom is the author of five books, including the multiple-award-winning novels SUGAR BIRDS and LEANING ON AIR. In her forthcoming WHAT THE RIVER KEEPS (August 2025, Tyndale), a reclusive biologist returns to her childhood home on the Elwha River, where she untangles her mysterious past. Cheryl lives with her veterinarian husband in rural Washington State.