Flooded park-land ~ Beningbrough Hall

We found a flood ~ and made a Haiga

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Beningbrough Hall is an 18th-century country house with beautiful gardens and parkland, now in the care of the National Trust, just a few miles north of York. We set off one day for one of our regular visits - a stroll in the grounds, painting, photography, and lunch in the excellent restaurant. What we didn't realize was that the River Ouse, into which all the rivers draining the Yorkshire Dales run, was in flood. We discovered the extent when we reached the old wooden toll-bridge crossing the usually narrow, sluggish river.

As we reached the centre of the bridge we realized that the river was now about half-a-mile wide; hurriedly parking the car, we went back to the bridge to take photographs. It was late afternoon, and the low sun picked out these lovely willow trees - usually high on the bank - casting interesting shadows on the water.

Crossing the bridge and looking upstream, we could see the flood-waters stretching across the Vale of York as far as the eye could see. True, floods cause so much misery to so many people, but as long as you are safe and not affected by them, they can add beauty to a normally dull landscape.

This part of the Vale consists of agricultural land, mostly grazing, and the farmers are well used to fairly regular flooding here. The plain stretches between the uplands of the Yorkshire Dales in the west and the low, rolling downland of the North York Moors to the east, so all the river waters have to drain through here, until they reach the North Sea via the River Humber.

This was the upstream view from the bridge, with the appropriately-named 'Goldfish' well inland from her usual mooring.

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As we leaned on the bridge, with the low sun fully behind us, I noticed that we were casting a perfect shadow on the water; more interestingly, a piece of the bridge structure cast a pointed shadow between us. I immediately thought 'Meeting Point', and reached for my camera. At the time I just thought that it would make an interesting photograph, and later filed it away for future use.

Much later, through my Internet friends Jerry in Indiana and Pris in Florida, I learnt about the art of Multimedia haiga - a modern development of the ancient Japanese art of combining ukio-e paintings with haiku. This modern variation combines photographs and haiku (usually short, three-line poems, with a history stretching back more than a thousand years). The art is to write a poem which has a meaning - or meanings - independent of the image, but which also connects with and complements it, thus sometimes revealing yet another meaning.

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One day I was looking through my folders and came across the 'Meeting Point' image, and it sparked off one of those happy inspirations that are all too rare. Here's the haiga that resulted.

Jill and I weren't 'perfect strangers' of course - that was just poetic license, in order to give the work universal appeal.

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