Encounters With the Wind

I distinctly remember a blustery winter day when I was a boy and the wind, according to the radio reports, was gusting to seventy miles per hour. It was exhilarating fun to be out in it, out away from the house and trees, out in a field, and leaning into the wind's dynamic power, balancing at rakish angles with my arms spread, in a small way defying gravity.

The wind would caress and console me for many years after that first dramatic encounter, sometimes reminding me of its strength, sometimes whispering to me of its concern. Without it life would have been a drab existence, a static, mechanical ticking away of time. But the wind, as an insistent father, would speed life up to a flurry, or like a sheltering mother, slow it down to a lull.

Many years ago, before the magnificent windblown tiny islands of the Exuma chain of the Bahamas was discovered by tourists and illicit traders, a friend and I were sailing a small trimaran along it’s western shores. We had gone in search of fresh stores from one of the few small villages of the islanders. The wind was slow and steady, our sails set and the tiller tied. We each took up a favorite position on the opposing outriggers, and propped our feet on hatch covers, laced our hands behind our heads and sighed, grinning at such great relaxation, preparing to doze and digest our breakfast of lobster and fresh bread.

The water was crystal clear and you could see the shallow bottom distinctly, every shell, every ripple of sand, each small fish foraging in the grass flats. Except for the splashing of a small wake, you couldn’t discern the line on the hull where the water met the air and it sometimes seemed as if the boat were floating in mid-air.

The skies were radiantly blue with small puffs of clouds drifting lazily toward the northeast. Suddenly, a gale force wind swooped down on our small boat and blew us awake. The sails stretched and cables hummed and the hull groaned as we both jumped up and tight-roped the pontoon’s struts and leapt into the cockpit. The windward hull lifted into the air and we instinctively shifted our weight toward the wind as we fought to loosen lines and set sails free. The sea rose and slapped at our small boat, removing hatch covers and filling hulls. Waves splashed into the cockpit as we struggled to pull down the sails.

Fortunately our boat was lined with foam for flotation and of a very shallow draft so when we blew ashore on the white sand beach of a small deserted island, we were still intact. The wind and the overcast that accompanied it passed as quickly as it had come on, leaving us standing on the beach staring at a boat filled with water and wondering aloud, “What the hell was that?”

My friend walked down the beach and retrieved the fugitive hatch covers and we both set to removing our stores from the inundated hulls and bailing the water. After a short time we were back on the sea and headed for our little secluded mooring. Although everything had reverted to our former blissful state, things were different. We were sobered with alertness and a sense of being unprepared for what might be next.

What is the wind, anyway? You can recite any amount of reasonable scientific explanations for the movement of air through changing barometric zones, but if you are at all observant you have noticed that the wind has distinct, unpredictable qualities reminiscent of personality: a playful zephyr that removes your hat or a stern gust that slams the door behind you.

When I was in the military I was stationed in the Asian Pacific where I experienced the devastating power of its mighty typhoons. On a ship at sea, a ship large enough to hold thirty five hundred men, we witnessed two hundred mile per hour winds, large enough to mound the waves eighty feet high and toss the immense ship like a toy, burying its bow in one wave and raising it far out of the water on another.

During another storm of similar intensity my fellow Marines and I sat huddled in the middle of a large barracks and watched as the wind blew out an entire wall of windows on one side of the building simultaneously, scattering glass all over everything. We laughed and joked like soldiers anywhere but we knew we were in a presence as powerful and unpredictable as war itself.

But the wind is tender, too. Who hasn’t suffered the heat of a summer day and then felt the embrace of a cooling breeze, or opened a window in a cramped and confining room to feel fresh air waft through, or been comforted by the lifting of light curtains. And when you fly a kite, the wind is a cooperating friend, tugging gently at the other end of your string, holding your invention delightfully aloft and teasing you with its drafts. For a long time I have sensed that the wind is more than just an impersonal force, that it is a guardian, a friend I can trust, even when it is in a temper. Something behind the wind beckons to me and calls me to a fuller wonderment.

Not too long ago I was working in the garden. I have a small hill with terraced plots and I had just raked a whole wheelbarrow full of leaves from the top plot. I was distracted by a flurry of airborne activity just a hundred yards or so away, above and beyond an old apple tree that stands forty feet tall in one corner of my yard. I am a little nearsighted and I thought at first that it was one of those big flocks of little birds that all fly around together, swooping and veering in unison and all landing or taking off at the same time. Then one flew out of the flock towards me and I realized that it was a large oak leaf. And then I noticed that it was all leaves twirling in a whirlwind that had picked them up from the neighbor’s field and was holding them aloft.

I dropped my rake and stared. I had seen little dust devils kicking up dirt along the side of the road but nothing as large as this. The swirling leaves were sixty or seventy feet high and twenty or thirty feet across at the top and just a foot or two wide at ground level. The wind took a cyclonic shape and came past the apple tree toward me. I felt a small trepidation but all in all the wind seemed gentle enough. It wasn’t roaring or tearing branches or doing anything destructive, but it was coming right at me.

It made me smile. I felt a great sense of joy as I witnessed this little personable wind take a form with thousands of leaves. It advanced through my bed of garlic twenty feet away, right between the first two rows, picking up all the mulch and leaving a bare path between the rows. I laughed. It was a marvel. Then it came and stood beside me and seemed to pause as it rustled my clothes and my hair and my beard and sucked up every leaf from my wheelbarrow. I was amazed. I was faint with delight as it moved over toward my two story house, whipped all the leaves against my bedroom window and the side of the house around it and then dropped them all in disarray in the yard. I had to sit down then. I cried. I had never had such an uplifting encounter with the wind before. I had no idea what it all meant but it had singled me out and been wonderfully personal, gentle and friendly, jostling me and tousling my hair like I was a little boy, leaving me with a sense of being loved.

The next day I was beside the house raking up all the leaves that the wind had dropped in my already cleanly raked yard. I set the rake across the handles of the wheelbarrow, put my hands on my hips, looked up at the sky and said, “You know, I’m always cleaning up after you.” And we both had a good laugh.