Wind

The winter wind rattled the bare tree branches.  They clattered against each other like animated dancing skeletons, angular and jerky in their movements.  But now each full leaf catches the wind, each flips over to reveal a silvery underside, each operates on its own separate hinge at its own moment with its own shape. In the wind every separate leaf is alive with motion. The trees sway, the branches sway, and each leaf is its own little wind sock, fluttering, flipping, resting for a moment.  The hillsides are in constant motion.  The green corridor along the road waves me forward.

The swallows drift on the wind, acrobatic kites. The wind ruffles the crows’ feathers as they walk across the grass looking for breakfast.  The tall grasses wave in ripples across the fields and the queen anne’s lace nod their heads. The mirror of the pond is broken into fragments, reflecting bits of sky and earth. There is so much to look at. Our neighbors to the west are nearly hidden behind trees now.  With all these greens, with the complexity of light and shadow on leafed trees, its hard to remember the stark white simplicity of the winter landscape.

We came to Sunnyhill just after the shortest day.  Now we are less than a week away from our longest day, Rowan’s birthday.  The sunrise will stop advancing north across the bathroom window and head back south. Up here on our hill it’s easy to understand why earlier people were astronomers.  The sky is so important. There are the positions of the sun’s rising and setting, the phases of the moon, the steady stars and the wandering planets. All this will remain for a longer time than we can imagine.

But will there still be trees to wave in the wind?  I think of all the damage we have already done to our fragile planet, the great herds of buffalo gone, the massive flocks of passenger pigeons.  If my grandmother’s grandmother had immigrated to America, she would have seen them.  I think of my grandchildren’s grandchildren, and wonder if they will see hills covered in trees, fields covered in grasses, queen anne’s lace, rocket, mustard, ragged robin. I wonder if they will watch swallows gliding on the wind, if there will be any bobolinks left in their day. I think about the choices each of us make every hour – to drive the car, to throw out the plastic and styrofoam, to have more stuff shipped in cardboard boxes. Here on Sunnyhill it’s so much easier to see that it’s one living planet, that what we do anywhere changes everywhere. The wind carries our failures and our successes.