And the Wind Blows

Wind frightens me.  It’s one in the morning, and the wind is blowing.  It is REALLY blowing.  Alexa (a Christmas gift from Bryan) says to expect winds at ten mph with gusts to almost thirty mph.  I know that March is supposed to be the month of wind, but here we get a lot of wind in January.

I remember when I was a kid, living in Southern Colorado.  My family of five girls and a mom and dad lived in what we would today call a Denver Square. No central heading.  No inside plumbing.  Electricity was a drop cord light hanging from the center of each room.

Sister Clara and I slept upstairs beneath heavy quilts made by mom from our father’s overalls and old jackets.  And, the wind blew.  The wind blew so hard that I was sure, as a child, it shook the bed in which we slept.  I’ve remembered that fear for my entire life.  At a point, I thought that it could not be true.  Wind blowing into and through a house, shaking the bed where two little girls slept.

So, I asked Clara how she remembered the wind.  Somewhat to my surprise, she agreed.  The wind was so strong that it shook the bed in which we slept.  So, wind frightens me.

Tonight, I went to bed a little before one but, as I lay there listening to the wind in my trees, I decided that I was not going to sleep.  I don’t lie abed when I can’t sleep.  I get up and do something or watch TV.  Tonight’s something is to write a blog article – about wind, of course.

My 78-foot-tall cottonwood tree is good at giving me presents of twigs and sometimes branches brought down by wind.  A couple of years ago, a branch fell from its perch but didn’t make it to the ground.  My neighbors, Keith and Rita, pointed out that I had a sizable branch hanging halfway up in the tree.  A danger to anyone who might need to walk under it.  I called my tree people to see if someone could come to take it down.  Of course, they could, for $600!

For about four months (until the next scheduled tree trimming of all of my trees), the branch hung in the tree.  To remind anyone not to walk under the hanging branch, I placed my white plastic garden chairs in a circle on the grass under the tree.  When the tree guys came to trim all of the trees, it was the first thing to come down.

I don’t know much about the tree trimming business, except that they trim and I pay.  I don’t watch them climb the trees to do their work.  To see them climbing around in the cottonwood tree, walking out onto the largest branches, makes me afraid to watch.  When I apologize to Derek for having trees that have to be climbed (they can’t get a “cherry picker” into my yard), he always assures me that his guys love the challenge of climbing trees – it “makes” their day, he says.  Anyway, I don’t watch – except THAT time when one of the workmen shinnied out onto another strong branch and cut that dangling branch so it would drop to the ground.  That must have been some feat because all of the other workmen applauded.  I’d never heard them applaud each other before.

The front door of my house is on the north side.  When the snow falls, it stays and stays and stays on the grass and only leaves the sidewalk and driveway because I clean it off.  The one kind of wind that I don’t mind is the chinook that barrels down the east side of the Rocky Mountains taking the snow with it.  In the morning, when I look out to see if anyone has delivered any packages during the night, I’ll know whether or not this wind is a snow eater.

In the 1980s, when I interviewed for a job in a small school district on the Eastern Plains, I was asked if there was anything that would keep me from taking the job.  I honestly said, “Yes.  If you have tornadoes, I can’t live here.”  I was assured that that would never happen because west of the village, a line of hills kept the wind from building to the speed of a tornado, protecting the small towns on Interstate 70 from Deer Trail to Limon.  I worked there three years before returning to college to work on another advanced degree.  Within one year after I left the school district, a tornado tore through Limon, located twenty miles to the south and east.  So much for the protective line of hills!

It sounds as if the wind is going away.  So, good night.

The morning after:  The wind is gone.  The sun is shining.  The snow is still on the front lawn.  But, surprise – surprise, I do not have any presents of dropped twigs or branches in my back yard.  If my cottonwood dropped anything, it must have been blown away to another yard.

Be safe and be well.

The Cranky Crone

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