November Writing Challenge Day 2

Wind. 

Once upon a time, in a land full of dirt roads and gently rolling hills, there was a cabbage plant. And under its largest leaf quivered a small winged grasshopper. The grasshopper wasn’t sure what had happened for him to be separated from his 392 siblings, but here he was. He was scared, but he wasn’t cold. He was lost, but he wasn’t blissful. He was green, but he wasn’t jealous. His yellow eyes darted anxiously as he chewed his bottom lip. He flicked an antenna and waited. 

Pretty soon he heard the chirrups of friends and neighbors 40,000 strong and he ventured out from under the cabbage leaf. He stretched out a leg and eyed the sky for swooping sparrows. The golden wheat rustled and he warily watched the high grass for other uncertainties. He climbed a stalk and munched thoughtfully on a tender sprout he’d found on the way up. It was green like him. The stalk shifted slightly. He gently swayed in the wind. He spread his wings to shake the dust out.

And he remembered being lifted, the sensation of being weightless, and this was it, it was wind. It was wind beneath his wings. And he was flying away, to the next cabbage patch, on the next wind. 

I never gave much thought to wind until I went out west. It’s not like we get hurricane gale force winds here in East Tennessee. But in Oooooo-klahoma (where the wind comes sweeping down the plains) it’s a whole different scenario. It took me till the Painted Desert to learn my lesson about only opening one vehicle door at a time. That’s right, you have to coordinate with other passengers who’s going first, second, and so on so that you don’t create a swirling vortex in the middle of your car. And so that you can get the doors slammed back shut without them being ripped away. It’s crazy! But the flags always look nice. It’s so constant and powerful they’ve harnessed it like we harness water out here and have these crazy huge clusters of windmills providing energy to homesteads.

But here the wind is more of a gentle breeze to be appreciated from a porch swing or the shade of the old maple while catching a break from the garden. The tinkling of the windchimes lures you to relaxation with the sweet notes that ring out. In the rare event the wind gets too severe, it’ll break the middle of the Bradford Pears out (blasted trees!!!) or take out some old rotted limbs. Thankfully that doesn’t happen very often.

In the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines…and we shiver when the cold wind blows…Bill Monroe certainly accurately captures the image of the wind in the Appalachias. Curl up in front of the fire with a mug of hot chocolate and a tattered copy of Gone with the Wind and read while the snow falls and piles in drifts.

 Of course, here at the Johnson Plantation, the most common wind is of the broken variety. No little grasshoppers here. Just barking spiders.