After a spring-like day yesterday, today we are back into winter. I heard the change roar in around 11:30 last night. Things outside began banging or rolling or whistling. I have never liked hearing the wind. My sympathy is with the animals in that. Wind makes them nervous and I can understand why. I’ve heard it explained that when the wind blows, they can’t hear enemies who may be creeping up to do them harm. That is not my particular fear. Perhaps it is with childhood experience and buried memories of wind causing sparks to jump out of a chimney and start a fire, or a storm which blew down barns, or the possibility of a tornado. Or, maybe it’s the sound which is sort of like a roaring, restless animal. Whatever the reason, I don’t like to hear the wind blow. A friend of mine once told me he liked to hear the wind because it reminded him of childhood days at his grandparents’ home when he would go to sleep feeling warm and protected and listening to the wind trying futilely to get into the house.
Songs and poems about the wind abound. Of course wind is necessary. Where would sailing ships be without it? Or clothes hung to dry on a line? How many of you remember seeing laundry hung outside, dresses and jeans blowing in the wind as if they were doing a wild, crazy dance? Wind is a part of the balance of nature and I wouldn’t want there to be no wind. In the summer, a good, cool breeze is welcome but when it blows like it did last night, well, I still don’t like to hear it. There is wisdom in weather lore and I close with a very old rhyme about the wind:
When the wind is from the North, skillful fishers go not forth;
When the wind is from the South, blows the bait in fishes’ mouth.
When the wind is from the West, that’s the time it is the best.
When the wind is from the East, ’tis not good for man nor beast.
But when the wind blows all around, find a cellar underground.
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