Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
~ Christina Rossetti
This is one of my favourite poems from childhood. My mother read it to me with the delicate authority that came from being a primary school teacher and stage actress. I loved the poem, as it helped mitigate my fear of wind. I always dreaded that the tall douglas firs I watched swaying dramatically on stormy days would crash onto the house.
The last few days in this too-long winter have been more windy than usual. I don’t let occasional snow stop me, but I sometimes opt not to hike in the wind. My ears dislike the feeling of whooshing air, my hands get cold, and I’ve come close a few times to being hit with falling branches in the woods. But, there are such things as hats and gloves and more wide-open trails, so what really stops me?
The wind also sometimes leaves me feeling stirred-up and unsettled, which is something I can’t dress for or change my route for. I usually try to ignore this and brave the elements, but today I turned on the music to drown out the gusts, and danced around the living room. Then I sat down to write. The wind outside my window is making the branches slap against the house and the sound drives me to distraction. But I decide to take this as a challenge to focus even more intently on what I’ve set out to do. Keep writing. Who knows what ideas might blow my way?
Several years ago in early autumn I visited a dear friend in New Hampshire who took me into the country to visit a friend of hers, a writer and professor. Martha lived alone in a rambling old farmhouse surrounded by fields of tall grasses, ringed with stands of tall graceful white-barked trembling aspen (or poplar). As we walked up the lane, the trees were stock still, but each individual yellow leaf on every tree was quivering. The aural effect was that of a small rushing stream. I found this both gently enlivening and calming.
Martha welcomed us in and we sat for a good long while on her front porch drinking iced tea. Our host seemed to me one of the most grounded people I’d ever met. Her head was full of knowledge and ideas, but her energy was so connected to the earth. She was not unlike the poplars.
Then the wind picked up, and I asked if we could head inside and tour the house. There were a good many rooms and a good many pieces of Shaker furniture to admire, and a good many well-loved books to sigh over. The tour concluded up a narrow set of stairs to a small long room under the roof’s steep peak. The study. A plain wooden desk and chair sat at one end, and a cozy reading chair at the opposite. Bookshelves filled the walls, and every available surface was covered in stacks of papers of half-read books. The windows were open, and the wind rushed through, sucking sheer curtains in at one end and blowing them out the other. Papers fluttered madly under paperweights and books.
This was not the same calm breeze that made the yellow leaves quake, and my first instinct was to shut the windows forthwith. I would never leave windows open in my home on a day like this. My eyes were glued on Martha. She was so unperturbed by the chaos. Suddenly, something shifted inside me and I experienced the wind in a whole new way. It was refreshing. It cleared out the dust. It brought inspiration, perhaps (which would be fitting, considering the word “inspiration” comes from Latin for “to breathe”).
I resolved then to let it be, to let the wind be the wind and bring what it may. One of my favourite songs, Vince Guaraldi’s “Cast Your Fate to the Wind”, which I’d loved for musical reasons, took on new metaphorical meaning to me. I would try and be mindful of the occasions when I strained to control the uncontrollable and remember to let it be.
Martha led us back down the stairs without closing the windows. The rest of that afternoon I continued to marvel at her respect for the wind. And, obviously, this memory continues to inspire me.
I have been “too busy” doing other things to write often these days, and I tend to let the memory of the physical discomfort (in the form of neck and eye strain) discourage me rather than the satisfaction of the creative process encourage me. But it’s good to be back.
SEE with a WHY 