Sunday, 16 August 2009

Chasing Felicia away

When I first showed this photo to a colleague the other day, one who grew up on the island and is fully aware of all the local legends and myths, the first thing they said was that it looked as though a monster was chasing Tropical Storm Felicia away from the mountain. I looked at him and thought long and hard about how I ought to respond, but I looked at the photo again and I think I can see why he said that (he wasn't being serious by the way!). Not that I believe in huge monsters living off the Kohala coast or anything like that, but it's normal behaviour for someone to use their in-built pattern recognition when looking at what are really quite random patterns and assigning them to more recognizable and familiar features, such as the human body or face.

Look again if you can't see it. There's a giant cloud-monster in the middle of the picture with arms wide sweeping up the storm clouds.

And people think I'm joking when I mention we spend our nights on the mountain shooting down UFOs...

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