D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
April
2008
Gone with the Wind
Pardon me, I must be blowing. . .
Whenever people ask me about the climate here in sunny Southwest New Mexico, I'm always effusive with praise for our "four gentle seasons," then tack on an inescapable "but." We're blessed with generally warm temperatures — happily moderated in the higher elevations like Silver City, where summers seldom get too hot — and a profusion of sunny days with bright blue skies. Compared to everywhere else we've ever lived, winters here are a laugher. Autumn, though lacking the brilliant range of colors enjoyed in places like New England, lasts gloriously long. Spring is. . . well, that's where the "but" comes in.
I guess "three gentle seasons and one that'll blow the socks right off your feet" wouldn't be quite as catchy a slogan, or as easy to fit on a billboard.
When it comes to spring in Southwest New Mexico, I could talk about the bounteous wildflowers, the sunny skies, the early arrival of warm temperatures that mostly banish winter by the time the calendar turns to March. To be honest, though, I have to add, "But it's windy in the springtime."
As understatements go, that's like saying the planet Mars gets a tad nippy at night. Or that great white sharks make poor houseguests.
Windy? As I write this, the wind gusts are just starting to kick up for the day. Small dogs, shrubbery, unsecured Big Wheels, billboard sections, planters and old tires will soon be scooting past, reminiscent of the tornado scene in The Wizard of Oz where the bicycling Miss Gulch whips by in the twister along with various black-and-white detritus. The roof will rattle. Lawn chairs will shudder across the patio as if moved by a ghostly hand. Trees — such as they are here in high-desert country — will bend like old men. The brave pinkish buds just beginning to pop from the branches of our almond tree will have their mettle sorely tested.
By afternoon, walking up the driveway to the mailbox will require an act of will and strength of legs comparable to Hillary's conquest of Mount Everest. (No, not that Hillary.) The mailbox itself will veer from the force of the wind until it's almost facing the house instead of the road. Removing mail from the box will require perfect timing and quick clutching to the chest, lest dozens of credit-card offers and several pieces of mail that should have been delivered to our neighbors take wing and wind up in Deming.
I'm sure there's a scientific explanation for our windy springtimes. Something about high-pressure ridges, stationary fronts (not to be confused with stationery fronts, better suited to formal letter-writing) and barometric pressure isobars or minibars or somesuch. Alas, understanding the meteorological underpinnings of our windy weather won't make the gusts go away, so I'll spend my time battening down the hatches instead.
It's not as though I'm a newcomer to wind. Growing up in eastern South Dakota, I used to joke that there was nothing to stop the wind blowing straight across the state from the Black Hills eastward. We especially got the wind in the wintertime, where it combined with the omnipresent snow to create the fun phenomenon of blizzards. Snowdrifts can be a beautiful sight — nature's snow sculpture! — until you have to drive a car through one that's higher than the top of the steering wheel.
Back in South Dakota, we tended to get a lot of wind in the autumn, too, which I think is more normal for most of the world. When the autumn winds kicked up, scattering the leaves I'd so painstakingly raked and piled, my dad used to quote Percy Bysshe Shelley: "O wild west wind, thou breath of autumn's being. . ." My dad taught English literature. I hated raking leaves. Needless to say, this little recitation failed to comfort me.
I suppose we got springtime wind when I was growing up, too, or I wouldn't have been able to fly kites as a kid. Not that I did all that much kite flying, to be honest. Flying a kite is one of those activities that's better in nostalgic recollection than in reality. Let's face it: Kites mostly just crash. You launch one into the wind and in all likelihood the dang thing is going to nose straight down into the ground, breaking its pathetic little struts or ripping into windblown shreds. Some fun, huh? Getting your kite stuck in a tree is the least of your worries, Charlie Brown notwithstanding. That presupposes you're actually able to get the kite into the air long enough to reach tree height.
We had windstorms and spring tornadoes, too, of course. Spring and early summer were prime tornado season in South Dakota, leading to many fun-filled nights cowering in the basement with only the battery-powered weather radio for company. Most of us cowered, that is: I vividly recall the night before our June wedding, as funnel clouds danced around the fuel-storage tanks visible from my soon-to-be in-laws' house (tornadoes and flammable liquids, what a great combo!), my future mother-in-law watching the incipient carnage from her front porch. (Was this truly a family I should be marrying into?)
But I don't remember this sort of sustained, gale-force springtime winds anywhere else. With depressing regularity, spring brings wind to Southwest New Mexico with a force and consistency I've never encountered elsewhere.
Other weather phenomena have their fans, but not wind. Some folks love rainy days. A few nutcases actually like snow (a good thing, else Vermont would be depopulated). Fog has its charms, as long as you don't have to drive in it. Even tornadoes have their chasers, like in that movie Twister. OK, I don't suppose anybody longs for hail. And hurricanes aren't popular — but that's partly because of the winds.
When was the last time you heard somebody sigh wistfully and say, "Gosh, I just love a windy day!"? Or, "I wish the wind would whip up and ruin my expensive hairdo." Or, "I love it when the wind blows my trash all over the lawn."
Even the popular songs that seem to celebrate the wind don't exactly inspire, well, gusts of affection. The Association's hit, "Windy," sounds more like it's about a person — "Wendy"? — than a meteorological phenomenon:
"Who's peekin' out from under a stairway
Calling a name that's lighter than air
Who's bending down to give me a rainbow
Everyone knows it's Windy. . ."
Frankly, catchy as the tune might be, the lyrics don't make much sense at all. "And Windy has stormy eyes/ That flash at the sound of lies." Say what?
Then there's "They Call the Wind Mariah," from the musical Paint Your Wagon. Sorry, but when it comes to celebrating a weather event, it's no "Singing in the Rain." Check out these lyrics: "Before I knew Mariah's name and heard her wail and whinin',/ I had a gal and she had me and the sun was always shinin'." If you were running an ad campaign for wind, that little ditty would not be playing behind the images of kids flying kites and Farrah Fawcett's windblown tresses: "When you're lost and all alone, there ain't no name for lonely."
Sure. The tagline could be: "Wind. Why not just get a gun and shoot yourself?" (There's a reason that places like Casper, Wyo., have the nation's highest suicide rates — blame it on the wind.)
Nor would Madison Avenue find much use for "Blowin' in the Wind" to promote the upbeat, likable side of wind. Bob Dylan's lyrics suggest that wind is anything but warm and cuddly: "The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,/ The answer is blowin' in the wind."
Popular book and movie titles aren't much better. For every Wind in the Willows, there's a Gone with the Wind bringing to mind images of the burning of Atlanta. Even Inherit the Wind, remember, ends with the teacher who dared to teach evolution being convicted, and the Bible verse from which the title derives isn't exactly cheery: "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind: and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart."
No, there's not much good to be said for wind. Even when wind blows trash and litter away, doing you the favor of cleaning up your yard, it's merely carrying the trash to somebody else's yard. Calling that "recycling" doesn't make it right.
Around here, springtime wind is just something to be endured. On the bright side, maybe all that wind in these spring months makes us appreciate the weather more when, thank goodness, the wind ceases. After all, if we truly had "four gentle seasons" all year 'round, we might get spoiled, right?
Although, when the wind starts whipping the way it is today, I think that's a chance I'd be willing to take.
Gotta go. I think that was the hot tub that just blew past the window. . .