Three Faces of Wind

The wind whips with abandon, even now its cool fingers intent on tearing page from leathery spine. It carries a dull warning, that reverberating howl learned eons ago when the Earth was young and this same wind nothing more than its first mewling cries.

 

To my eye, and ear, and skin, the wind operates in three spheres. I mark those caveats, the all too short limitations of my untrained senses, for undoubtedly this constant cavalcade, this ever-present omniscient force must play some part in all machinations of this coastal world. While it is only three which I can appreciate, I must, like the landscape it sweeps so soundly across, give the wind due credit for its aplomb.

 

Sphere one is above. As high up as necks can crane, amongst that pale blue firmament pocked-marked with spectral white. There the wind plays choreographer. It’s troop, a ceaseless series of bulbous pillows and tendril like wisps. On some days, perhaps when those powers higher still call down to feckless wind and give that command which rings rest, these atmospheric performers might deign to take on unnatural shapes. The head of lion, with mane splayed proudly for miles behind. A clown’s baton, raised to strike down the climax of his joke. A long and tired elephant, trunk twirled in faint loop-de-loops. Today though, the circus has moved on, only rough jumbles of cotton candy left behind.

 

Some miles below, though still undoubtedly skyward is an arena claimed by an altogether different cadre. Performers still, these absurd amalgamations of ballerina and jester blanket the sky in clusters of stained white. Oh, what jesters they must be, for the only sound that dares compete with that of the wind, with the roar of resolute waves crashing against still strong stone, is their raucous laughter. It roils through their ranks like charged static, or a hot and humid fever. Guttural yet high pitched it echoes down from unseen perches atop invisible swirling eddies. Never before have beauty and ugly, those forlorn twins, so tightly wound around any of Earth’s many creations, worked together in one singular form. From afar the gull is a wonder. The coast’s foremost daredevil. Fearless in the face of gale and wave alike. How gracefully each slender beast swims overhead, an endless series of dips and dives, skimming breakers like bullets through the long barrel of the coast’s rifle. While on occasion each gull dances alone, it is all the more common to see them as an individual speck in a swarm of deceitful gallantry. One would do well to remember that their dance is best viewed from a distance. Within each gull pulses an insatiable tenacity, that trait all too often cherished in man, which goes awry in the beak of the seabird. At the first crinkle of cellophane, the sky alights, and like a plague of white washed locusts, the gulls are upon their hapless quarry. What before resembled La Sylphide now hearkens only to that hazardous drone of flies upon horseshit. Lazy loops accelerate, circles tighten, the sun is all but blotted out. Like all over-told jokes, their cackles now irk, and wonder flees under the heavy beat of their wings from the now prosaic coastline. One can not help but wish they could trade in their oversized umbrella for a twelve-gauge.

 

Too the wind has deigned to impress its harried ideals onto the waters of this great lake. Here lies our second sphere. A careless mistake it would be to forget that it is not the water’s choice to whip itself into such a state of frenzy. Left to devices of its own, there is little doubt that even the largest collection would spend each day in idle thought, with little motion beyond that gentle lap on sun kissed shore. It is the stern command of that unseen hand called wind which sweeps like the fingers of a god across this wet and desolate acreage. Each white capped, foam riddled crest is but the final tumult of a journey made in spite. To understand such is to pity the wave, to look deeply into its dark and sullen eyes. No wonder then it crashes so haphazardly against the edges of its confines. Too, it seems fair how quickly it retreats, back into the hallowed depths from where it was so crudely forced to leave.

 

On days marked with particular fervent, days not unlike the one which has birthed this freshest accounting of the wind’s many morals, the borders of the water’s tub do not satisfy the wind’s angry need for control. As each wave completes its journey in a final climax against sand strewn rocky shoals, and a nervous energy buzzes from that broken crest at the notion of a pilgrimage back to furled and icy depths, the wind, with a singular offhanded flick steals a droplet or two more. These unfortunate specks sail up and away from their place of comfort to land as ungracefully as the common raindrop on dry and blighted land. How cruel an ending for those hapless drops, for though they indeed may once again be returned to their ancestral home, it will not be without trial and time.

 

Now comes the third sphere, and may it prove to be the most wicked. For even in the air’s anathema, the wind’s tenacious digits have plied their way to efficacious results. Not only do bits of detritus, those lost feathers, stray leaves, tendrils of wisp like moss, float across the shore, but the Earth itself comes alive. The movement here is not the same grandiose patterns in which the wind coerces the lake’s swells, but still grains of sand tiptoe across outstretched feet, malevolence heavy in each of a thousand impacts. It is as if the world has been turned to hourglass, and patience lost many turns ago. Though dastardly in design, this final frontier of wind’s coercion proves a fruitless exercise, for the remaining grains of sand still outnumber passable seconds, with more arriving each minute, spewed forth from the foamy mouths of those cantankerous waves. Still further, this moment’s work will be undone, for the wind is a multitude, each day controlled by a new puppeteer. What sails the coastline today, makes a beeline for the beginning again tomorrow.

 

My legs are rubbed raw, sanded down by the very earth upon which I sit. My shirt is speckled with drops sent from shores unseen, and my ears ring from the frenzied caw and the constant whorl. The wind owns this place. I imagine it always has. I think it always will.