“Tyler’s Creek was a ravening, greasy gray monstrosity, thirty feet of grasping, hungry, primal power. It thundered like Niagara, pulling bits of the hillside, roadway, and vegetation into itself with its strong, greedy fingers and eyeing its human audience hungrily. Kate swallowed, mute, as a piece of the opposite bank the size of a small car suddenly broke away and slithered down into the muddy torrent. A good-sized tree came washing around the turn, its naked roots twelve feet across. The waters rammed the roots into the soil. They stuck for a long moment before the bank gave and tossed the tree back into the center of the flood, where it whirled around crosswise in a fast, ponderous spin before being caught on a cluster of boulders, snapping instantly with a crack that momentarily silenced the constant roar, and folded itself in a streamlined fashion for the flume to run it to sea. All in barely thirty seconds.”
–Laurie R. King. A Grave Talent. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2010 (Kindle version). Quote in chapter 12.