
Well, not exactly. (Calling the Wind, by Julia Maddalina, part of the “Tales from Temerant” series.)
Welcome again oh thou band of disheveled desperadoes to this, our lectern in the Den of Desolation where to “break wind” holds an entirely different meaning.
As you will no doubt recall from our last installment of this breezy ballyhoo, we are here today to examine the Other in its third form of manifestation, specifically, “It arises out of stillness to deliver a message that is swift, clear, and commonly open to interpretation,” and in a manner not unlike our treatment of the first kind in Winds of Change — Part the Third — A Leaf in the Face Beats a Tree on the Head, the tales I have for you today will reveal the Other in two shades.
Let us begin with a shade darker and lighten up from there, shall we?
It was in the Summer of my nineteenth year and I had driven the family van from Lunenburg to a farm in the community of Blockhouse, Nova Scotia, to deliver a piece of tack to my sister who had a summer position there leading trail rides for tourists. It was a hot windless day under a blue sky dotted with pure white cotton ball tufts of cumulus and I was standing next to the van talking to my sister and the farm owner when the characteristic sound of a massive inhalation presaged what soon transpired.
To set the scene, the farm’s driveway was no more than 100 meters by well maintained dirt road from the highway between the towns of Mahone Bay and Bridgewater, nestled in trees and situated against a wooded hill. Across the dirt road was another rural property with a large yard where all the neighbourhood kids seemed to play, and the road continued on through undeveloped woodland, eventually petering out into a goat track before swinging left and improving before intersecting with another main drag. Approaching from the highway, the farm was on the right, and reaching its driveway required passing by a tangled wall of old and neglected hedge marking the property line that didn’t reach the ground anymore in most places, and towered raggedly in varying degrees of health to between 8 and 10 feet in a pretense of privacy.
The sound of inhalation was accompanied by a literally hair raising breeze that seemed to rise straight out of the ground, both where we were standing and well into the surrounding foliage where branches suddenly fanned the air and several leaves took flight. I remember someone remarking how welcome the breeze was in offsetting the heat of the day when all ambient sound abruptly zeroes in on the part of the dirt road that was on the other side of the hedge. What happened then was a cacophony of rushing wind, rising road dust, raised adult voices, and screaming children. All heads turned toward the road in time to see a whirling brown cloud that towered over the hedge travelling at a walking pace from the direction of the highway. By the time it had neared the end of the farm driveway, the dust it contained had been joined by a random uprising of yard toys, lawn chairs, and random forest debris, that rained down everywhere including two cars parked at the house across the road and over the hedge not far from where I was standing. The rushing wind overlayed on the racket of hard objects hitting other hard objects was astonishingly loud, but not enough to drown out the sudden upwelling of swearing male voices, screaming women, and the high pitched squeal of the little girl who came into sight spinning like a doll in a dryer above the top of the hedge.
I started running toward her, knowing she would be too high to reach by the time I got there with the distance I had to travel. As I ran, the dust devil and its cargo moved fully into view at the end of the farm’s driveway, and then another young man, previously unseen behind the hedge, appeared airborne from my left, wrapped his arms around one of the girl’s legs, and tore her from its grasp, both falling to the road where they skidded to a stop with the sudden arrest of forward speed. Still running, I was able to change direction and was first to reach them. They were both bruised and a little bloodied in spots, but no bones were broken and the little girl was at more risk of being smothered by her mother than any lingering aftereffects.
Beyond us, the whirlwind continued along the road unopposed before veering off to the right into the woods where it rapidly died in a hail of evergreen branches and twigs.
Not being unschooled in meteorology at that point in my life, I had immediately recognized what I was looking at, albeit in short lived disbelief, was a dust devil as such things are not uncommon in Nova Scotia, but most generally in open spaces completely unlike where I was. But the conditions were otherwise favourable, and the official consensus was that it was born of heated air rising above the pavement of the nearby highway, and triggered when the wake turbulence of a large truck, or two even smaller vehicles going opposite directions, passed by the intersection with the dirt road adding energy to the twirl. That certainly fits the science, and all makes sense if you can’t sleep at night without an explanation for everything you witnessed during the day, but what furrowed my own brow was that a phenomenon of rarity in my particular part of Nova Scotia sprang to life in proximity to a location I rarely went, at a time when I happened to be there, in a manner guaranteed to involve me as more than a simple observer who just happened in the right place at the right time.
So do I think this was about me? Yes, of course! It might have also been about other people who were there, for example at this remove I would dearly love to speak with the little girl and her rescuer about the experience and how their lives went after the fact, but I don’t believe I “just happened” to be there.
What was the message? I don’t know. I may never know as most would ask, within the context of a “teachable moment” if that can even be applied to such things. But I have since had another experience that fit a remarkably similar template, chronicled in Covey Island Shenanigans — What Do You Tell a Man With Two Black Eyes? which you should either read or reread as the shoe fits. The message got a lot clearer after that.
Now, the lighter side.
In the Winter of 1980 I conditionally relented to the pestering of a friend (Bruce) I met on the first day of my first university year when at the whim of residence management we became surprise roommates. How we met is offered purely to establish the background of our relationship and probably isn’t in any other respect relevant to the narrative. At any rate, after four years of living together in close confines under the stresses of student life, I knew him to be personable enough not to kill him on the trail. He was green as grass, slightly out of shape and soft of sole, but as we say here in Canada, oooh jeeze, he was eager! Knowing my bent for solitary days long wilderness jaunts, he wanted desperately to be taught a thing or two in that regard so, with the proviso that he acquire some basic personal kit from the very specific list provided, commit to learning proficiency in its use, and achieve the necessary physical conditioning before the planned departure date, his Mentor would escort him on a three day march through the Nova Scotia woodlands in the Spring of 1981, at the height of the Blackfly season.
To avoid carrying too great a load, we had broken the trip down to three legs with camouflaged caches of canned food prepositioned at two intermediate way points, and dried foodstuffs carried with us as a hedge against the Dread Prophet Murphy. The caches were where we would camp for the night, and as a further weight saving measure, we would sleep “under the stars” unless the often persnickety Spring weather declared against us. As it turned out, Nature smiled upon the endeavour, her nocturnal kiss leaving but the tips of our hair frozen in the dawn.
Travelling on foot in most inland parts of this province is, and in our case was, characterized by a cycle of up the hill, down the hill, through the swamp (possibly ford the stream), up the hill … aaaand repeat to your destination. Water levels are generally high in the Spring so the swamps are REALLY swampy, and all this ambient wetness calls for diligent sock management or the entire enterprise will devolve into lameness. At any given time then, we travelled with the socks on our feet either wet or soon to be so, a damp pair hanging off our packs to dry, and another two stowed inside awaiting rotation into service.
On the first day, the sun was warm with no wind other than that created by the passage of one’s body through it. The Blackflies were glorious in their ravenous multitude, but stymied in their swarming as long as forward motion was maintained. Stopping to change socks though, now that was another problem, for even slathered with our body weight in DEET, the Blackfly onslaught was relentless. You see, unlike Mosquitoes who will veer off at the scent of DEET, for Blackflies it’s a contact repellent so they will swarm and alight, but quickly lift off and then return a half second and a half inch further on in search of the tiniest nontoxic landing zone just big enough to stick a hungry proboscis through.
And so it was that it was my turn to sit down on a rock in the still, dead, fly laden air to change my socks while Bruce, my companion, took the initiative of fanning me ineffectually with a Spruce frond in an effort to keep the flies off. After a couple of passes that came a little too close to knocking my glasses off I told him to go fan himself, and then I looked at the sky and made a loud request —
“Can we have a little wind over hear?”
A few seconds after the sound of my words died away, over the sound of files buzzing in our ears, came what was by then for me a familiar sound of inhalation , and then a strong steady wind that swept the flies away and brought us blessed relief.
My friend was flabbergasted, and I am happy to report that the rest of the trip was blessed with a breeze as long as the sun was up to stir the pot.
The Other came to my call adding its dose of mirth to a traveller’s travails, and I say mirth because it was in the spirit of grim humour that I uttered it, and in so doing, the effect was not unlike the way having married well and thereby walking with the Woman of my dreams at my side makes me appear more potent than even I believe I am,
As a final note of advice before we end today, don’t try this at home. See you Saturday for our poetic Epilogue.