Hare leaps Tortoise
Sometimes stories don’t get a proper ending,
Or rather, you think you know the ending … but do you really?
Case in point is the Tortoise and the Hare.
The Hare (rainfall) sprints off to an early – seemingly insurmountable – lead, then (at a high-water mark of overconfidence, say, at the end of the wet season in October) falls asleep only to have his lead slowly eroded and finally erased by the steady pace of the Tortoise (evaporation), who, from that point forward, widens a lead to the finish line (in late spring at the end of the dry season).
End of story … right?
When it comes to Mother Goose, the answer is “yes,”
But if in fact we are talking about the water cycle (and I think we are), the answer is a decisive “no!
You see, in the water cycle, since there is no finish line,
The Hare reawakens with the return of the summer rains.
That’s when the Hare jumps over the Tortoise!
(Talk about a surprise ending for the reader, a comeuppance for the Tortoise, and a new moral to the story – “never count the water cycle out!”)
5 comments:
Well, that's a non-traditional ending.
Here, we know our mountain snowpack and expected runoff, but if we're lucky enough to get spring rains (and this year we did), then the hare leaps ahead.
Cute story, Bob... I like the 'never-ending' storyline---so I guess I'll choose your ending over Mother Goose's. Our Tortoises seem to win alot of the races when it comes to RAIN.... We've been missed several times lately---with other nearby places getting PLENTY.
Hope you are having a great vacation.
Betsy
And here I thought this was an Aesop's fable, and not Mother Goose ;)
---Prem
Thanks for your comments. The Tortoise and Hare is a fun way to conceptualize the water cycle ... with some minor twists (the never ending finish line being one of the). It especially works well in sFL because of our distinct wet and dry seasons.
Douglas Hofstadter wrote a book: Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach) has a lot of tales about the tortoise, the hare, and Achilles. He missed this particular scenario!
Post a Comment