JUNE 11, 2020 – Wind is caused by differences in atmospheric pressure—a high pressure system battling it out with a low; or when two people with sharply contrasting opinions have a shout-out.
Yesterday brought a lot of wind to our neck of the woods. Oops! Bad choice of words. I meant “golf course.” After escaping my newsfeeds, the source of gale force wind, I found my way to the “Little Switzerland.” Gone were the hordes of golfers who’d crowded “my space” before the lockdown was relaxed. I could “climb” and “descend” the “jagged peaks” to my heart’s content—or at least to its health.
But whoa! The wind! Gusting to nearly 40 miles an hour, the wind kept grabbing my cap, and I kept grabbing it back. It became a game. Sometimes the wind would ambush. I’d be striding down the slope in calm air when WHOOSH! . . . the wind’s invisible hand would snatch my cap by the bill and spin it like a frisbee into . . . the wind. I’d make a zig-zag chase way off the fall-line (the most direct line from the mountaintop to the base). Other times the wind would sneak under my cap and lift it gently, ever so slightly. The wind laughed as it watched me walk with one hand pressed down atop my cap.
(Because the sun was bright and I needed to shade my eyes, couldn’t foil the wind by wearing the cap backwards.)
The wind’s whimsical game reminded me of a great discovery I made many decades ago. Somehow, somewhere, I’d acquired a traditional navy cap—the sort worn by ordinary sailors in the U.S. Navy generations ago. I was into sailing at the time and wanted to look the part as I tacked, ran and reached aboard my little sailboat on Grindstone Lake. In a tenuous nod to the Vikings, I even painted a bright Swedish flag onto the front of the cap. No sooner was the paint dry, than I hoisted sail and with the cap at a jaunty angle atop my crown, ventured into the wind-driven waves of our deep blue inland sea.
The rigging strained as my sails billowed, and with abundant white caps, Neptune yielded to Aeolus. Yet my sailor’s cap, perched confidently aboard my head, paid no heed. With a happy, elevated view of its nautical course, my cap deflected wind, sun, and spray. “Hmm,” I said to self. “So the ol’ sailor design has an aerodynamic function, as well as style.”
* * *
As I descended the Eiger and headed home, I pondered the howling political winds of our day. Maybe it’s time to bring back the sailor’s cap as the symbol of stability, rationality. As our ship bucks and plunges into rough, uncharted seas ahead, may we keep an even keel and . . . our caps on our heads.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
