Cyn Kitchen: Gusty winds may or may not exist
Road signs out west that caution drivers about unpredictable weather conditions sound more like philosophical life advice than actual warning. Once, I drove a 26-year-old motorhome through New Mexico and saw a sign that read: “Gusty winds may exist.” I laughed at the metaphoric inference but soon figured out that, however figurative it seemed, the sign wasn’t exaggerating. The adventure of that driving experience, one that had taken my four children and I through 10 states and over 4,000 miles in 10 days, was like being blown across the country. We endured sporadic gusts of interpersonal impatience and disagreement just as unpredictably as we had encountered crazy crosswinds while cresting a rise in the road, our motorhome a giant sail on the vast red plains of the desert southwest.
I’ve been thinking a lot about wind lately because, especially where I live, it has been blowing relentlessly. It seems the forces are stronger, ironically, on days when I mow the grass which results in me completing the task half-plastered from head to toe in green clippings. Anyone who lives in the country or on the edge of town, away from windbreaks, knows our region is notorious, especially in spring, for its nonstop wind-blowing. Coastal states that are vulnerable to hurricanes probably laugh at us for our baby winds that seldom do significant damage. Yes, we have tornadoes and derechos and straight-line winds, but the random nature of a twister’s destruction means not everyone feels the full impact of that kind of force. Our storms are random and unpredictable as opposed to unrelenting. My point is that in our neck of the woods, winds blow in general, but we aren’t in any danger from them. Not really.
I love a breeze blowing through an open bedroom window on a moonlit night before summer’s humidity descends. I’m also grateful for the ways a good breeze keeps pesky flying insects at bay. Breezes blowing through the trees that line my road sometimes sound like applause, at other times, a calming shoosh as unobtrusive as a lullaby.
But the winds we’ve been enduring out here in recent weeks are beginning to wear on me. It’s been so windy that, even with warm temps, it’s no fun to be outside. Two people can’t carry on a civil conversation for having to yell above the gale. Everyone’s trash gets rearranged, sometimes passed on down the road. Lawn furniture tumbles into fence rows; branches litter the yard.
I’m not afraid of lightning or thunder. Hard downpours don’t faze me. Even a hailstorm, though not a lot of fun when I know I’m going to have to call my insurance agent in the morning, doesn’t provoke the fear in me that wind can. I don’t know if it’s because I can’t see it and can’t predict what it’s going to do next, or that I can see the effects of it, can hear branches breaking, can see the leaves swirling dervish overhead.
My house makes peculiar noises in the wind, depending on the direction it’s coming from and to where its headed. It sings, certain octaves rise from the notes the wind plays as it hammers against the outside walls. On blustery days, those sounds are ominous and foreboding. Gusty winds may exist, indeed. I much prefer the quiet.
I tested the cliché that wind is God’s breath, but that didn’t help. If it is God’s breath then he’s angrier and scarier than I like to think of him.
Once, during a particularly long, rainy spring, I asked my mother, “Do you think it’ll ever stop raining?” to which she replied, “It always has before.” That was many years ago, and I still marvel at the wisdom of her comment. It reminds me in those times the wind seems to blow relentlessly, nonstop, no abatement in the night, the morning dawning with it still pounding away, that eventually the world will calm down again. Why wouldn’t it? Sure, gusty winds may exist, but they also may not. Sometimes we have to ride out the storm to get to the calm that lies ahead, where we can regain our bearings, straighten the scattered lawn furniture, put the trash can right again, scoop up the random bits littered at our feet and finally, sit a spell. When the wind is blowing and you wonder if it will ever stop, remind yourself that it may blow for a season but there’s never been a time when it didn’t also stop.
Cyn Kitchen is associate professor of English at Knox College and a lifelong resident of the Galesburg area. She is the author of “Ten Tongues” and also publishes creative nonfiction and poems.
This article originally appeared on Galesburg Register-Mail: Cyn Kitchen: Gusty winds may or may not exist
