What Invisible Wind?

Feb 1, 2006 by Naomi.

“Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I” wrote a perceptive woman poet a century ago - still a truism. Evidence of its presence is another thing. Newest invisible technology showed us immediate results of terrible winds passing with the hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast last year and others across the continent and the world. I remember a narrow swath of large trees knocked hither and yon in northern Minnesota decades ago by a tornado cutting what in hindsight appeared to be a capricious meandering path through small towns and wooded countryside.

The wind across the desert here in central Washington state whips sand into our faces when we struggle from our cars to shopping malls. The amount of soil moved by those winds often prompts highway closures because visibility is nearly zero and wind velocity overturns sizeable trailers and small cars. On my curbside the wind overturned my garbage can - a fifty gallon sturdy plastic container filled with garden debris and some household garbage - scattering small boxes eastward down the street. I rushed out to collect the scraps and right the container before the pickup vehicle arrived.

With the sun rising higher the wind seems to have bated. Warm sunny February weather, not in the past showing such mildness, is quite welcome, leaving fingers itching to dislodge last year’s dead growth from among sprouting early violets and daffodils. I have much extra cleaning in the yard, picking up twigs and pine cones felled by the early morning wind. Considering the aftermath I face is hardly worth pondering when realizing what others face after the onslaught of other winds at other times in other places.

“Who has seen the wind?” Who indeed? Does it matter? Oh yes. It as much of the unseen as that which we visibly encounter that shapes our lives. The brain stores all we learn from experience, all we accept via television, our friends, our family, and gives us the ability to live our own lives, shaping our actions and decisions, making our dearest dreams - or fears - come true.

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