SEPTEMBER 4, 2020 – We create much wind with our words, and far from curtailing the gush of hot air, face masks are cranking up the volume and velocity of our windstorms.
But up here at the Red Cabin, it’s the old-fashioned wind that’s prevailed of late. The other night the south wind blew so hard I felt I was aboard an old wooden ship on the high seas, timbers creaking and moaning under the force of Aeolus’s inexhaustible bluster. By daybreak his bombast abated but only for a time. He soon resumed his rage but more from the west. His personality changed as well. No longer a steady blow, he was now erratic—straight-line blowing, interrupted by a sharp downdraft, then relative calm followed by a sudden, cap-snatching gust.
I left the canopy of trees that surround the cabin and walked out on the dock for an expansive view of sky, water and . . . wind. The surface of the lake was a good predictor of a fickle Aeolus’s next mood swing. Rippling in a sustained pattern, the water 100 or 200 meters away turned sharply darker as wind shear struck from above, giving the “shivers” to the rippled surface. This dark, “shivering” section moved across the water until it . . . blew a dock chair overboard and I steadied myself to avoid the chair’s watery fate.
In the late afternoon I embarked on my daily “deep rescue” mission in the “tree garden.” That is, with shears and clippers, I waded into the brush on our harvested acreage and “rescued” from poplar shoots and raspberry entanglements, two- and three-foot tall white pine seedlings I’d planted three years ago. The loggers had left a few old growth trees, and these survivors of the sawyer’s blade wrestled mightily with the unforgiving gusts aloft.
As I moved slowly through a thicket surrounding one of these trees standing tall and vulnerable, I’d hear Aeolus crescendo into a squall. I’d watch as the crown of the tree twisted and swayed and wondered if grand part of nature—a giant in the earth—had the strength to withstand another great force of nature: the wind.
From a falling branch, my helmet might offer protection, I thought, but what if a heavy oak limb snapped clean away or a whole tree should fall? With the increased rush of power-air, I’d find my way to the windward side of the tree until danger subsided.
I continued my “deep rescue” mission, hoping that one day my pine saplings will grow into giants of the earth, swaying in the wind but never yielding to it.
By nightfall, noisy, boisterous Aeolus had passed over the eastern horizon to bother some other woods and rough up some other lake. In place of the roar was a silent, silver moon, its light spreading gently over calmer waters. The trees stood tall and calm again. Unruly Aeolus? You might say he was . . . gone with the wind.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
