The Butterfly Effect

It's a beautiful day here, with a light breeze, low humidity and hummingbirds topping up frequently at the nectar bar. The perfect day to take breaks in the yard, picking up sticks and pulling stilt grass.

A few minutes ago the chainsaws revving in the distance finally claimed their victim as Folkstone lost another of its giant oaks. By now I recognize the harbingers, those first crashing-through-brush sounds that are followed by the thud of a massive trunk hitting the earth. I almost felt the ground shake. And I wasn't the only one. A distant dog began to bark, too. 

It made me think of the butterfly effect, a part of chaos theory which posits that small changes can have large effects, with the oft-used metaphorical example of a tornado's path being affected by the flapping of a butterfly's wings far away. 

Although that example is a simplification, small changes do have big consequences. We see it all the time in our lives, in everything from the first tiny crack in a windshield to the first small rupture in a relationship. I think that's why the concept of the butterfly effect caught the popular imagination. And why I thought of today, as the tree fell and the dog barked and I ... wrote my post about it.