View of the forest around Stockaryd, July 2005. The clearing work after the storm Gudrun has resulted in a visual tree shaped in the landscape. The photo was also awarded Picture of the Year 2006 (photo courtesy Joakim Berglund / Expressen).

It’s actually the salvage logging clear-up from a hurricane event in Sweden, so it’s questionable how much of the shape is due to the wind-damage process and how much is due to tracks of the logging operation, but the result is a distinctly tree-shaped hole in the forest. Re-documented here 20 years after “Storm Gudrun”.

Today’s context is that I was reminded of the missing image above when I saw this short MP4 below showing the rivulets left behind a tide ebbing over the mudflats of a Chinese river. (Social media algorithms being what they are, I have captured the image / video but have completely lost the details and provenance.)

(Despite the help of ChatGPT can only find similar but not the same video, so all I know: “Tidal tree” on the Qiantang River, Zhejiang, China. Original filmmaker/source currently unknown—identification welcomed.)

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