Bedlam

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Here’s another view of this storm, taken just south of the Canadian River.

The geography here is known as the Breaks, rough and rugged terrain that’s very different from what you’d expect to see on the Plains. Barry Lopez’s excellent book Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape describes it this way:

Breaks, in the western United States, are tracts of rough, broken land, similar to badlands, that are of little commercial or utilitarian value – stretches of terrain, cracked and fissured by arroyos and ravines, nearly impossible to negotiate for any distance on foot or by horse. A dramatic example is found in the Texas Panhandle, where the course of the Canadian River abruptly fractures the smooth face of the Llano Estacado into a virtual bedlam of steep hills and tight passages.

There’s bedlam, too, in the sky above the breaks.

near the Canadian River
Roberts County, Texas
photographed 8.28.2014

Posted on October 8, 2014, in Photography and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. 7 Comments.

  1. Very ominous sky here – I’d be stocking up my storm shelter.

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  2. Very beautiful – and very dramatic! Thanks to Leanne, who led me here!

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  3. Wow. Brett would love this! That’s a great shot. I had no idea there was a Canadian River in Texas. I’m going to look up why it’s called that now, because Canada came from Kanata, which is nowhere near Texas.

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  4. I found this as well. http://www.canadiantx.org/history.html
    So it looks like Canadian is used like a pronoun, rather than something from Canada. The area itself is called “Canadian.” Interesting. That would throw into question some of the theories thrown about in the “Etymology” section of that wiki entry.

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