Large Fierce Mammal

The Sun and The Wind — My experience resembled the Aesop Fable only in the Wind part, with the Sun merely an interested bystander.

Welcome back Goode Reader to our bald hilltop where the Winds of Change hold sway, and though we seek here for enlightenment, no lamp of knowledge, as most know the meaning of the term, can stay lit for long. Ah, well. No bother, for it’s still story time, and I can spin a yarn with the best of ’em, no matter how dark it gets.

Last time I related two tales in which my experience of the Other fell to the greatest degree into that described in the first of what I have found to be its three most common manifestations:

My own experience and studies have so far led me to conclude that, to a greater or lesser degree depending upon the seeker’s receptiveness and ability to grasp patterns, the Other may choose to make itself known in three very obvious ways:

1. Superimposed upon or “riding with” existing wind conditions so that its presence and purpose isn’t recognized until a very specific outcome separates design from the mere vagaries of weather;
2. Ready and waiting so that, at first, it is mistaken for existing wind conditions until its purpose is realized; or
3. It arises out of stillness to deliver a message that is swift, clear, and commonly open to interpretation.

Join me today we will move on to manifestations of the second kind.

Returning once again to Halifax, Nova Scotia, the first time I experienced the phenomenon I am about to describe, or probably more accurately the first time I recognized it, was in the Winter of my first year at university. I walked pretty much everywhere back then both in an effort to learn my way around the city, and as a requirement for maintaining my treasured status as an impoverished student. On this day I made the pilgrimage from my residence building on the Dalhousie campus to the Bayers Road Shopping Center, a nearly 8 and a half kilometer (5 and a quarter mile) round trip, for reasons I no longer recall. My outward route appears below and strongly resembles my return trip because I took the same route back (something I don’t recommend and no longer do for reasons long aforesaid).

The entire trip took place under a cloudless late morning January sky with a still air temperature of around -20 degrees Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit) and if the air had actually been still, such a brisk stroll at that point in my annual winter’s acclimatization would have offered no discomfort at all. What I found as I started walking westward along Coburg Road was a strong, steady headwind by every meaning of the term, and I found myself looking forward to making the 90 degree right turn northward onto Oxford Street when I reached the end of the block. So I reached that turn and after a few steps on the new heading discovered that not only was I still walking straight into the wind but its speed had ratcheted up a notch. In my youthful innocence I attributed this to an anomaly of airflow induced by the large building at the corner of Coburg and Oxford but it soon proved not to be implicated as it receded behind me and I realized something else was happening. The rest of the trip out fit the same MO, each change of direction met with a miraculous headwind and an increase in speed until my final traverse after the dogleg in Bayers Road had to be done tightly cowled within my parka, its comprehensive hood drawn to a peep hole, and walking mostly backwards to stave off the freezing tears and facial pain that promised frostbite if I kept going the way I was going. By this point, the wind was strong enough that I was reclining slightly against its pressure to make headway, every step anticipating that such a capricious devil might think it amusing to suddenly stop the music and drop my ass on the sidewalk. I needn’t have worried and at last my goal was gained as much by sheer spite of will as any need to engage in commerce.

What I was there to buy is lost in the mists of time, but I recall that my mission was successful and whatever it was had been safely stowed in one of my huge parka pockets when a little over an hour later, fully thawed, lunched and caffeinated, I egressed the shopping center for the homeward leg. Nearly four and a quarter kilometers. Into the wind. Every. Fucking. Step. Of the way. The few people I encountered on my way who weren’t inside of vehicles were running bundled to or from them, huddled in bus stops, or making short bolts between points A and B, never knowing in their brevity of exposure that they were but collateral damage to the travails of the purposeful and devilishly handsome young man who strode among them. I am as happy to report that I arrived safely and with my boyish good looks intact as I am that nobody I told about it believed me, seeming by general consensus to consider it all part of a trap awaiting the punchline to spring. A matter of no consequence, and an inherent risk for those of us known to apply traction to an ambulatory appendage now and again.

Thus endeth today’s lesson. Join us here Wednesday for our next installment and an examination of the Other in two shades of the third kind.