Playing Fair and Being Kind

THE SUN WAS LATE TODAY

March winds are one thing but today was quite the exception. March 2^nd. The winds began in earnest last night before midnight. Paul Cousins had announced it during his weather report. The forecast from Paul called for an increase in wind during the night and becoming a major force before daybreak today. I groaned.

A combination of seasonal activity, global warming (climate-change my ass!), and geo-engineering rules all weather activity. The presence of higher winds since late last year I have been suffering nervousness. Whenever I hear the winds pick up and gust across Hodgdon Island my triggers get switched on. Even the mention of winds in the forecast sets me on edge. In November of last year, a tree had fallen across the roof of my boat-shop behind my house rendering it a total loss.

The event precipitated my early retirement from boat building. I was still clearing away the debris of the building and the tree now in early March. The trees on Hodgdon Island had been thinned during this building boom of the twenty-first century. While they had been grouped together naturally, the separation and removal of trees had weakened their hold on the thin layer of soil. The island was a granite outcropping with just a covering of centuries-old rotted detritus that barely supported the root systems of pine, spruce, and red-oak. The soft woods gave up most easily.

The winds we are hearing today are the type that the Abenaki spoke of years ago while describing Gluskabe to the children. Gluskabe, the son of the Great Spirit, grew weary of the winds during a weather event. He found the Wind Eagle and tied its wings to stop the chaos in his village. While he was climbing the mountain to sneak up on the Wind Eagle the wind was so strong it blew the hair off his head. Today is like that.

The winds blew in gusts exceeding forty and even fifty knots. They came out of the West. Just a little nor’ard actually. (Side bar: Of the sixteen cardinal directions I know the precise direction from which the wind was blowing at this point in time is WNW. I hope that clarifies things.) I felt one gust that shook the house and banged the window panes, “BOOM!”. The sun, which had been rising over in the East, seemed to shudder just a bit. I’d never seen this happen in all my eighty-two years. The wind slammed into the sun with such a force that the rising was delayed by a few minutes. It took that long for the sun to gain steam enough to continue its task. Live long enough and you’ll see some strange events.

I didn’t notice if the clock was slowed down any. But I do know the sun stopped as evidenced by the rising of steam over the horizon toward the East and I could smell saltwater frying.

Mark the calendar. March 2, 2021. The sun stopped in its tracks because the wind blowed so hard.

G. M. Goodwin
March 2, 2021