Windblown Wallflower
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Wind is supposed to be an element, but sometimes it’s more like a force. Funny that something invisible can hold the power to take down, well, really, anything. It’s a creature, this wind, and on last weekend’s camping trip it was angry. It was a teenager on a tear or a man wronged. It bent already-low plants further to the ground.
The first night, we sat by the fire in the kind of quiet that only comes from being down a series of dirt roads that most aren’t willing to take. The road to get there sported a blinking speed limit sign not for a school zone but because the pavement abruptly turned to gravel and stretched ahead unwaveringly. We stayed in a campsite with nothing more than a ring of rocks. There was enough space to absorb the sounds of humans and their engines.
“We shook off the tents and tables before we put them away, but the fine dust settled into the holes in my pants and the space between my molars.”
The next morning, the sky felt clear enough to see from that Utah desert all the way to Jupiter. I experienced what felt like all of the sky and all of the sun during a long run around the rim of a multi-layer picturesque canyon. The sun pinkened my cheeks despite multiple applications of protection. When I finished, I laid beneath the canopy of our trailer to block me from the brightness because there were no clouds to do so.
That changed in the night. I awoke in the deep time of two AM which is normally the kind of quiet I crave. But the wind was finished being a wallflower. It boomed then lessened, shouted then quieted, and could not be ignored. It shares those traits with the ocean, and I wondered if it picked up a bit of the sea’s personality as it brushed the wave tips far out into the Pacific before it arrived here. It found a familiar in those waves and brought that characteristic to the land.
It continued into the morning and as we broke camp, we made sure no two doors of the trailer or the car were open at the same time. Creating a tunnel for that wind would mean unseating all manner of unsecured detritus that accumulated on a camping trip. We closed our eyes when we heard a gust coming. We shook off the tents and tables before we put them away, but the fine dust settled into the holes in my pants and the space between my molars. I felt the grit on my lips.
“A tiny, buried-deep part of me missed it and felt disconnected. As if a cord was cut when I stepped onto manufactured flooring and closed the door to the outside. ”
As we drove out, tornadoes of sand arose, whirled, and dissipated in the space of a breath. Having roots in the Midwest, any swirling cloud hearkens to the big bad in my nightmares, the same way a tsunami would be for someone who grew up ocean side. So I suppose the power of the wind was ingrained early.
At home we unpacked under the threat of the snowstorm that wind was pushing across our mountains. Once everything was inside we closed the doors and breathed heavily, our shoulders slumping as they no longer had to do the work of fighting both wind and gravity. We could still hear it casting itself against the windows and rearranging loose objects in our neighbors backyards, but we didn’t have to feel it in the same way.
A tiny, buried-deep part of me missed it and felt disconnected. As if a cord was cut when I stepped onto manufactured flooring and closed the door to the outside.
The next day it snowed, the kind from Christmas movies that falls softly – so improbably since it’s coming all the way from the atmosphere. The wind returned to the barest of sweet breezes. I knew it wasn’t finished, and the raging would be back. But that harsh, loud, fighting element is the thing that brought us that beautiful, flaky, floating winter day in the middle of May.
