El Canto del Viento

Sometimes, the wind blows here.  There are only two full days left in this year of 2011, and today the wind is blowing.  I’m not sure what that means, but it just needed saying.

When I was just a little boy, wind played a big part in my life.  I remember riding in a car with Mom and some other ladies, pulling to the side of the road as we watched a tornado cross a mile or so ahead, wondering if it was going to strike the base where my Daddy was working.   I wasn’t very old, but I remember the awe I had for that dangling dark carrot of cloud and the force of the wind in it.

Not too much later, I spent several years in Western Oklahoma.  Red dirt, cotton, and wind.  Like most everyone else, we lived in some houses that were built before super-insulation and weather barriers.  The wind always found a way to whistle its tune thru some crack or another, and when we went away to visit other, stiller places, we would find ourselves stopping to listen, wondering what was missing – ah, it was the song of the wind!

I still have a scar on my back,  small and faded now, where a bicycle, a big cardboard box, a barbed wire fence, and the wind all came together in a wonderful brainstorm that almost worked.  It seemed a grand plan – strap the huge moving box to my back with a couple of belts, get on my bike, and let the wind propel me down the dirt road with no effort on my part.  All went well, until the barbed wire gate approached at a nice clip – the handbrakes just wouldn’t quite do it, and I wound up nicely stitched up in all 4 strands of wire. 

When Orin was in Iraq, he told of the wind that brought the dust, of the time they barely made it to a safe landing spot in the middle of nowhere – the things a parent ponders in the darkness, listening to the murmur of the wind past the eaves.

Fishing, the wind hardly ever ceases.  There is always a breeze of some sort – that much uninterrupted space just cannot lie still.  On shore, we hardly notice a lively breeze until it begins to throw things around and make a lot of noise.  On the water, the constant motion of the wind over the ductile waters has its effect, adding little waves on to bigger ones, building, whipping, singing.  When the rigging sounds overcome the engine sounds, you know it is really blowing.  At anchor or in harbor, there is nothing so mysterious and lonely as the sound of wind, singing thru the stays.  Promises of gales beyond our care to imagine, the mysteries of boundless power that might be building; one never knows, but the song hints at it all.

The old year seems to be leaving with that same sense of haunting, boundless loneliness that a gale on a dark night hints at.  The world is in a strange flux – changes all around, many core values now only a memory, uncertainty in everything that once was strong and secure.  Even me.  I try to hear the promise of spring, the hints of gentleness in the breeze, but it’s not working as well as I would like.  Maybe it’s time  to just hunker down, be glad for good, strong anchor lines, and wait.  Summer really IS coming, and life is still good!  Just a little hard to see for all the stuff blowing in the wind.

Fish on!