Today’s accompanying tune: “Soulshine” by The Allman Brothers Band
We braced against the rocks, grasping at exposed roots and low brush limbs that, undoubtedly, had weathered such storms before. We saw it before we felt it — the air currents visible over the glacial lakes below us. We counted down, crouched down. Three, two, one. And then it was upon us.
Wind is a fickle thing. A matter of physics transforms what is ordinary, what is life, into a force so strong as to rip off roof shingles, pick up pick-ups, move earth to block out the sun. It fans flames, moves water across the Atlantic in such fury as to create a self-powering cycle, renders breathing hazardous. It is as alive as anything, the rest of us simply existing between its inhales and exhales. We brace, we lean on the trees that have grown sideways so as to withstand the gusts. We sit in stillness, its absence, waiting for a a small gasp of relief. It sneaks in through the smallest cracks and assaults the strongest barricades. It chimes, it whooshes, it whistles, it rattles, it whispers. All along, the soundtrack through which we live.
The transformation through which air must go to become wind, from passive to active participant, is of no less magnitude than that of a caterpillar. It travels great distances, contorting itself around mountains and through canyons and over vast flat expanses. If you know wind intimately, you know its schedule. It sleeps in, taking mornings easily as the sun begins heating up the ground. Earth, the ground we animals trod, warms faster than water, creating an uneven surface as warmer air rises swiftly. The unevenness invites air to fill in the empty space, and the larger the difference the quicker the air takes its place. And so, wind often picks up in the afternoon and into the early evening, trying rapidly to fill the space created by the vacuum present at ground level. Birds ride the thermals over hills and mountains, cresting the ridges with the warm air as the rest of the afternoon grows still. As evening comes and the coolness seeps in, the wind slows, succumbing to the still of night as the warmth of the sun wanes. Until the dance begins again the following morning.
The two ecosystems most marked by wind, where wind is nearly synonymous with life, is in the desert and in the mountains. In the mountains, the jagged topography lends itself well to shifting air dynamics — temperatures at 10,000 feet are almost always different than those at 4,000 feet. The desert, too, is home to extremes, but often of its own making. Instead of topography, though we do have our share of interesting formations, we have the privilege of hot days, cool evenings, and plenty of space. The air can run, run as far and wide as it can, with the heat of the day. It rushes down slopes, eroding millennia-old rock as it goes. It inspires haboobs, the deserts’ giggle-inducing name for a whiteout, where sand moves in walls across the land, obscuring all in its path. It rattles and shakes, pulls cars out of their lanes and throws untended yard furniture three lots over.
Life in the Mojave Desert is indelibly marked by its winds. Its presence, often but not always in the winter, and its absence in the stifling summers. On one of my first trips into town, someone remarked that Joshua Tree was “poor man’s Patagonia.” When I asked why, he said, breezily, “we have all of the frigid wind and none of the mountains.” All of its sharpness, with none of its relief the unspoken trade.
When I finally went to Patagonia, I felt prepared to withstand the land’s most notorious weather systems. At first, it was no different, though the ambient temperatures meant I was bundled up a bit more than I would be at home. If anything, it was more pleasant — though the wind was fierce, I wasn’t being exfoliated by a thin layer of sand with every step. Then one day, while hiking the W trek, we got news that wind gusts would reach 142 kilometers per hour (roughly 89 miles per hour). The fjords of the land amplifying the temperature difference, channeling the air into thinner and thinner slots until it had no choice but to speed through, taking everything in its path with it. That day, that path included myself and some hiking companions.
We hiked in silence, attuned to the small shifts that signaled when a gust was headed our way. We listened, really listened, to the whistles through the trees, the gushes of air coming across the water. We watched rainbows appear on the water’s surface, enough water borne aloft so as to catch the light just so. It was beautiful enough to blow us over, sweep us away. We were caught up in it, experiencing it so thoroughly that other thoughts simply carried away, riding the gusts to valleys unseen. Our forced presence included rocky traverses with moderate fall zones and stone strewn beaches mere feet from the shores of a lake. The wind propelled us up and over and through, all while threatening to take us out by the feet. There was no use fighting it — we wove through its breaths, its heaves, and make it out the other side largely unscathed. It was my favorite day of the hike, by far.
Wind’s elusiveness, its secrecy from those that can’t speak its language, make it an anomaly compared to other weather events. You can see a thunderstorm coming, a blizzard can be forecast weeks in advance. Heat and cold follow well-worn patterns, or at least they do for now. But wind is fickle. It doesn’t have a favorite season or favorite place. It changes form, from cylindrical to funnel-shaped to an impenetrable wall. It’s subtle, with hints and clues but never clear messages. It’s an amplifier, a force taking somewhat mundane events to extraordinary territory. From small brush fire to record-breaking blaze. From overeager snowstorm to blizzard. Hurricane ferocity is, after all, classified by wind speed and not by rainfall.
And so, as a species that nearly always errs on the side of comfort, of predictably, we detest the wind. We alter our behavior, but rarely our thinking. We batten the hatches. We hunker down. We strap in and weigh down. Modern conveniences have evolved so as to help us weather, if you’ll excuse the pun, most events. We have tires for snow conditions, heat pumps for extreme heat waves, sump pumps for oft-flooded basements. But yet, we have not evolved ahead of wind, the force with which most extreme weather events reach such intensity. Wind has a way of stopping us in our tracks, halting our journeys, inspiring horror and awe at its power. It is something over which we have no control, only our abilities to withstand enough to shield us from its raw power. There is no outrunning wind, not so long as we continue to breath Earth’s air. Wind’s own dichotomy — we cannot live without air, but air is what makes most weather events particularly destructive — is particularly poetic thanks to its far reaches and inability to commit to a single form. As humans have tried, wind has succeeded.
And so we hug the boulders, grasp the exposed roots. Take cues from species much older than us. Because if there’s one thing they know how to do, it’s weather the storm, ride the thermals until it’s safe to come back to earth. Lest all be gone with the wind.
Here’s to feeling small, fleeting, and light.
- Megan