I
am at once lulled and exhilarated by the wind that is blowing.
There
is magic in the wind, this transition between what is now and what will come.
There is truth and honesty in the wind. There is a mirroring of the nature of
Life and the life of Nature as the wind surges up blowing; there is constant
change around and in us. This is Life!, the wind cries.
As
a little girl, I liked to hide out when the roaring winds came. I needed my own
private, quiet reverie, to explore my exhilaration as the wind came, blew,
subsided, surged. This was the time of year when something different happened
to the weather, the landscape, the whole look and feel of the place. I hid and
rejoiced and drew pictures in the thick silt that was deposited on windowsills.
I loved how the leaves spiraled up and around, how they flew off the trees like
baby birds learning to fly – wobbly and yet moving ever upward into the
currents. There was sound, movement, continuous change, and dusty leaf litter.
And there was clarity. For one or two spectacular days, I had this sense of
lightness, of freedom. I knew in those moments that anything was possible. The
wind honored the truth of my childhood: nothing is constant, but there is
always a refuge tucked away in an inner chamber. The wind could take me into
it.
The
wind teaches me how to clear out the debris, how to let the dust of lost
expectations and dreams settle so that I may redraw them anew.
Shortly
after moving to an island in the Puget Sound, I became so fully washed in the
sound and vigor of the wind that I created a bright oil landscape on poster
board. I recall that it was garish and overdone: offensive blobs lying like
dark hunks of mascara on an adolescent girl’s lashes. Still unskilled in
beauty. The outcome didn’t matter. It was the bliss of dancing, painting,
moving my whole body as the wind rocked my world.
Always
this happens with the wind. I happen. Maybe it’s the energy of the wind that
charges me up, electricity in my veins. There is hope and beauty and every
possibility exists.
The
fence fell over yesterday: a cluster of vines grew up robustly over years,
pushed their thick stalks in toward the fence, and weakened it so that
yesterday the small gust of wind could finish it off. For the first time, I was
eye to eye with the old scared dog next door to whom I’ve spoken through a
decayed knot in the fence; he bared his teeth at me. I offered to him kind and
gentle words and he plopped to the ground. I looked at the fence and wondered
if it makes “good neighbors” or simply isolates us in our compartments of a
life smaller than it ought to be, more artificially disconnected than we
actually are.
The
wind is powerful! Like fallen trees or fallen fences, I, too, prostrate myself
in the wind.
(Orig. posted 4 Oct 2013)
All blog images created & photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: "©2017 JenniferJWilhoit/TEALarbor stories. AllRightsReserved."
