Sedentary Travelogue #5: Lessons of the Wind

My arrival in rural Missouri did not happen the way I had anticipated or hoped for. I had been expecting to make the move for a while, and my enthusiasm for the new life I was adopting was strong. Still, life changes can be difficult to negotiate. It was therefore all the more unsettling to make the move after unexpected major emotional upheaval in my life. Instead of harnessing my energy for tackling the projects and challenges of life at the ecovillage, I had to focus much more thought inward. As I reported to many friends, my emotional state was surprisingly good, but I still felt acutely aware of the need to watch my boundaries and take care of myself.

Perhaps it was accentuated by my arrival time. Midwinter in the Midwest is not always an easy time of year. Living and occasionally sleeping outside didn't make it easier. The cold provided a world that demanded an inward eye and awoken my natural sense of self-preservation. Some days I would go out to work with Aaron on the timberframe cabin, having bundled myself up with a clear expectation of the cold. But then we would get out to the actual cabin, at the edge of a low hillside, covered in prairie grass. The wind would be rushing forward out of the west in a constant stream, and I would quickly feel the heat I had established around myself diminish. Working would keep me warm enough, but pauses were not encouraged. My reserves, thermal and emotional, did not run deep. I was content to just monitor them and make sure that they didn't run out, but running close to empty is not my norm.

One night, shortly after the sun had set, I was heading back to the house when the wind picked up. It had been a long day and I was feeling tired and sore already. My hair whipped in my face, my nose began running and my skin felt raw. The wind tugged, pulled, pushed and battered me. It demanded that I be aware of myself as a physical being, a hard nugget of a human animal within the elements. I was not enlivened or enlightened by this realization. But I was aware. The wind could erode my larger self-image, but there this nugget would hold on. I could not retreat into emotional distance. I could not lose myself in a miasma of worries. I was standing on a gravel road with the wind bearing down on me. I was surrounded by brown grasses, with large clouds overheard. I was a living being, standing in the world with all others. There was no denying my existance. It did not make me feel good, but it made me know my world. So I put my shoulders forward and continued back toward the lights in the windows.

Later I was thinking about the fact that I had long wanted to bring my life to a point of closer connection with the natural world. This idea was part of my interest in moving here. It dawned on me that part of that relationship I was trying to learn meant being open to the fact that winter is a drain on some aspects of life. Winter means recognizing that we animals are in a less accomodating world. It means respecting humility before the power of the world that we are dependant on. And more than I had ever experienced before, it meant feeling the joy of spring down to the marrow of your bones. Renewal seems to occurr at the cellular level after an intimate life with winter.

...

When I was younger I spent several months in a small depressed town in south eastern Kansas. Most of the local businesses and industries had fled and the railways had infrequent use compared to their glory days. The primary employer in the town was a state residential hospital for people of varying ages with mental retardation and, in some cases, behavioral disorders. My salary was extremely low, but the hospital also provided staff housing on the grounds for only $30 a month which made the salary enough to live on. I was intrigued by the experience before me, but my mother was in tears at the thought of leaving me in this dismal place.

The months that followed were a time of isolation and growth for me. One day, while sitting on the roof of the house's car port, I was suddenly struck by the sky above me. It was huge. The Big Sky. All capitals. I was pressed back flat against the shingles by the enormity of it. The land was flat, flat, flat and the stretch from horizon to horizon of dense October blue, streaked with clouds spanning beyond my eyesight, opened up my senses to a new capacity. The rest of my stay there was often informed and improved by an understanding of the Big Sky. I wish I could be more clear about the meaning of this experience, but there was a lesson in it that cannot be expressed in words.

It was the lesson of the Big Sky and it has stayed with me since. I have come to realize that here in Missouri, I will have much to learn from the wind. It whispers words from a language I cannot translate and it tackles me with symphonic power. It is complex and variable enough to avoid any simple definition or symbolism. It is ambiguous and frighteningly real, which is exactly why I feel I have much to learn from it.

...

Aaron and I had been working on the rafters for the cabin, feeling the sway of the entire structure as we walked across the timbers, 20 feet in the air. Dusk was descending and with it a storm was coming. The subfloor had gone in recently and since no walls had gone up yet, the rain could ruin our work. We climbed down and gathered the enormous blue tarpaulin. Nailed to the timbers themselves, this would be our temporary wall until we came out a few days later to continue our work. As the wind continued to blow stronger from the south, the tarp was caught against the frame of the house, ballooning inward to create a sail of the house's walls. As Aaron stood atop the ladder nailing the tarp down, I was off to one side pulling back with all my weight on the ropes tied to the tarp edges. I leaned back against the full force of the wind caught in tarp, struggling and roaring against the wind to hold my place. I had brief glimpses of a life at sea. I felt the struggle and, more surprisingly, the joy of the struggle. As the wind gallopped by I felt it move into me, through me and past me. With the next gust, I heard my own laughter billow out of me. If the wind was transparent to my eyes, my body was just as transparent to its course. And in that transparency, I felt alive and had no desire to be anywhere else.