08/27/2010 - The wind

…The wind does, working like a hand
Whose fingers brush the sky,
Then quiver down, with tufts of tune
Permitted gods and me.
--Emily Dickinson

When my son was a dozy, arm-held chubby thing, I remember taking him out to the porch one spring day, when it was fresh out. He was a midwinter baby, and I guess I hadn’t had him outside too much, or else too well protected from the weather. At the edge of the front porch, checking out the yard, a sudden north wind came through that whipped our jackets and teased our faces a little. Zeke jumped in my arms in surprise, then looked up at me, his expression asking, “what the heck?—“

I’d like to cultivate a similar feeling of newness around the wind, a startle reaction, a surprise, a noticing of that thing that is always present. We are all touched by air, feel the pressure of this constant movement, the constant play of gasses against our skin and clothes, but how often do we really notice it? Does it have to be outrageously wild, or can it be just a normal spring trill? Can I become aware enough to notice the subtle movements of air on a breezeless day? Or what about the wild tempests?

I took out my old anthology of Romantic Poetry & looked up Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind. (where the heck did I put that thing?). And Shelley’s Ode reminds me of a hike I made once with a friend up Mount Katahdin in Maine. We were looking for adventure and found it with straight-line winds on a ridge trail, over a field of boulders lit by lightning strikes.


It’s everywhere. Have I ever been without moving air, wrapping me like a blanket, messing my hair, coaxing the trees to speak, whispering secrets? What is the wind? What is the wind to you?