HIGH WINDS LEAD TO AIRY THOUGHTS ON THE WIND

All day I heard the high winds blowing, not high as swishing swiftly around house corners, stirring up dry leaves, but high as in up, way up. At first I thought it a roaring wind coming from afar that would soon reach the tall oaks and make their leafless limbs appear to be brushing the sky. When the sound of the wind continued and the tall tree limbs didn't move, I knew then it was one of those freak winds so high you can't see it do anything, yet hear the roar of it.

It was a cloudless, sunshiny day so there was nothing fearsome about it. Its very infrequency made it pleasant to listen to. I wanted to say, and probably did, "It has been a long, long time, my friend." I kept the TV and radio silent and was somewhat impatient when the refrigerator and furnace came on with their mild interference.

I sat down by my "listening window" and let my mind take me where it would, as the wind drafts allow the hawks and eagles to soar on and on, up and down without so much as wing flaps.

If there are no trees, skyscrapers or mountains to change the course of wind, does it just go on and on around the world, making an invisible Saturn-like ring around the Earth? If the wind, rushing around the planet, makes such a constant sound, does the Earth, rotating through space, make a noise? And the other planets too? Do the sound waves meet somewhere out there? If so, who hears? Old Pythagoras in the 5th century B.C. said, "There is music in the spacings of the spheres." And long before that the writer, or writers, of Job say that the Lord, speaking to Job, asked, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth? ... What supports its foundations, and who laid the cornerstone, as the morning stars sang together...?"

As the soaring hawk changes courses, my thoughts "come down" to contemplate the word, wind, itself, and I let my mind wander amongst wind words I have known.

Jesus, speaking to Nicodemus said: "Just as you can hear the wind but can't tell where it comes or where it will go next, so it is with the Spirit. We do not know on whom we will next bestow this life from heaven."

Then there is Windsong, as in a perfume, "Slowin' in the wind," as in the plaintive song; "May the wind be behind you," as in the old Irish Blessing; "Listen! The Wind," as in Anne Morrow Lindberg's book; "Straw in the Wind," as in doctors coming to appreciate Medicare patients more because such patients don't usually carry guns to shoot doctors if they can't stop their headaches; "Three sheets to the wind," as in you know what; windswept, as in "Wuthering Heights"; and "Wind in the Willows," as in Kenneth Grahame's book.

Ah, there I must stop my wind association words and go read again that part of the book that has the differing things heard by Mole and Rat as they heard the wind in the willows. Although it was a story told by the author to amuse his son, I think it so subtly explains how different people perceive things. When Rat hears the winds rustling in the reeds and willows he is almost transfixed by it. "O Mole," he exclaims, "the beauty of it! The merry bubble of joy, the thin happy call of this distant piping. Such music I never dreamed of ... Row on, Mole, row on...."

The Mole, greatly wondered ... obeyed. "I hear nothing myself," he said, "but the wind playing in the reeds and rushes and osiers."

REJOICE!