Who has seen the wind...

The words of Christina Rossetti's poem - narrated by the little voice of my four-year-old friend Ruthie -  echoes in my ear this evening as I return from a windy walk in the dark.  Not to be deterred from spending some quality time with Mother Nature, I donned my toque and borrowed my neighbour's headlamp to head out into the windy darkness after a day of indoor meetings.  The wind was amazing...pushing, pulling, surprising me from all angles tonight.  As I shut my headlamp off for the last portion of my walk I could make out the silhouettes of big powerful spruce trees being bent by the wind.

It seems as though this winter has been particularly windy: drifts blocking our driveways, pushing our cars sideways on the road, ripping the window right off our office building and whisking snow out of the park in a matter of a day!  I thought about the awesome power of the wind during my walk and our sometimes derogatory comments when it gets particularly blustery, yet how it is an integral part of this "Blow Valley" that I call home; the following quote came to mind.

Philosophy of Wind ~ Lyall Watson

"...the most common and readily accessible experience of otherness and togetherness, of being involved in something very big and very strange, is that of being blown by the wind...

You are touched by something invisible, something that bends trees and makes strange sounds.  It throws the ocean into confusion, whips up fantastic froths of cloud and carries off a desert in its arms.  And yet it communicates directly and intimately with you.  You can feel its effects deep inside."