Wind in the Wires

Words fall softly
lighting on my
skin like snow
A rhythmic whisper
drifting down
that melts in warmth
like rain
Words with meaning
they've never had
and never would again
Unique as flakes
that live for now
between the frost
and flame

-Brigid

The night is cold. And it is raw.

Wind blows off the plains, the low moving east, pulling the chill deep out of the ground and throwing it in your face, daring you to fight back. It was the first real snow of the upper plains.

Looking out across a flat horizon I wonder why this view looks so different from where I grew up. Certainly I can put on the scientist hat and say it was the glaciers that moved down from the north in the Cenozoic era, or the giant dust storms that followed that carried the soil away, then replaced by layers of volcanic ash from the West, creating a vista of fertility. But the difference is more how I live in it, as opposed to it's geological origins.

There is something about being able to see so near and so far. Some people feel exposed out in the open land, I don't. I walk the fields, gun in hand, nothing more than a moving lightning rod for those things that might wish to strike me, but they don't. I feel a lot out here in the open heartland, my black lab by my side, and it is not fear, it's comfort. It follows me as I walk, the sound of my breath, the whisper of God there in the corn, the vista of open miles of ground in which I perceive the absolute truth about the past, a truth beyond the buildings and billboards of illusion.

I remember a flight when I was newly settled out here, taking a small twin engine plane up North with a flight student who owned it. Thunderstorms bearing snow and ice were due to roar later through a segment of the Northern plains while we tried to get a recalcitrant airplane out of the hangar well before it was a threat. Airspace in severe weather is reminiscent of that graceful ballet that is a hockey game and controllers were performing small miracles getting the planes in and around the worst of it with consummate skill. Even in a small multi engine airplane with basic deicing what was coming was not weather for a small craft so we were anxious to get going.

The enroute weather was holding up, but on the way, the heater went Tango Uniform. We had plenty of clothing but it got really cold, really fast. We donned our hats and gloves and the extra coats. I was tempted to take a picture, we looked less like dashing pilots and more like overweight ice fisherman. I recall thinking, "ah, there's a little thermos of hot coffee" and I pulled it out of the little sidepocket by my seat. It didn't pour. It was frozen.

We landed at a little general aviation strip, covered with snow and I remember walking into the operator's business there to find a cozy wood stove, a dog asleep in front of it and the warm welcome you don't get even if you bring a new business jet to the door in some places. Welcome to Minnesota in the winter. Now, sitting safe at home, the temperature outside plummeting like one of those rides at Cedar Point, that is not for the faint of heart, the day catches up with me. It's not a safe place to be outside, I think, as the howl of the wind reaches in the window trying to grab me as I sit safely inside.

Trees throughout much of the northern plains are few, taken down so that the soil may be tilled, only a few remaining as protection against the marauding wind that cuts through the land late at night like a Viking horde. The cold presses down, pressing deep, into layers of topsoil, and the bones of ancient buffalo, who bury themselves further down to get out of the wind, strataform of bones and life and death, forming the coal that drives much of this area.


Tonight, this close to the window, I can almost smell the cold, the odor of a whetted knife, carving shadows into the night. My body responds in a way as ancient as these lands, and I pull my black sweater across my chest, tight and warm, and turn away from the glass.

"You ought to move back to the south", colleagues say. "How about California or Florida?" I enjoyed as a youth, like anyone, days snorkeling or diving for treasure, blue water dreams and tropical sun. But that is not where I want to live year round. I am not at home in such places all of the time, preferring these months of quiet cold, time to think, to write, to dream broad dreams, icy fingers down my neck making me shiver, the fire, melting marshmallow against my skin, melting me.

The lamplight dances along the walls, my shadow following. Barkley is asleep in his favorite spot, exposing his warm fur to a remembered sun of August, feet chasing dusk colored rabbits in his sleep. I think back to tales of my ancestors on my Mom's side, who came to the United States settling in Minnesota. Of great grandpa, new to the country, moving a household across miles of land, risking all he had to form a new life out where winters are raw, beating miles of ocean and illness and pain, only to lose most of his money, belongings and food as wind swept fire roared through where he lay sleeping one night. But he got out, accessed the damage, and gathered those small coins he had left to him, and moved on to safer ground.

The wind sings its siren song against the eaves, daring me to leave, to admit that moving to the Midwest, to the new land of my ancestors, where I had no family other than a cousin near Indy, or friends, was wrong. But I won't. The price that was exacted for learning my way alone out here left my heart an almost empty purse, with just a few scattered coins tinkling in the bottom. Yet I know it was a journey I had to make. You make decisions with what is in the heart at the time, and when the chill wind blows, you take stock of your life and your decisions and seek shelter elsewhere or you stand and fight for your life and heart, and what fuels it. To do otherwise is to wither and die. Out here near the windswept plains, the price of innocence is high.


There's food stored that will last a couple of years. There is fuel for a fire, there is ammo. Many nights I tend to it, restocking as necessary, bending over a press like a chemist in a laboratory, utterly contemplative, as if waiting for something. Outside tonight, the wind howls, mute in its anger, with no breath now but a sigh. We flee inside with drumming hearts and warm hands and hoist a challenge to the cold as the fire ignites the night. Here and there faint windows glow, while the trees outside lay their shadows across my shirt like scraps of black velvet. I close the curtain and pour the wine and listen to my heart.

They say the Rockies are God's country, but so is this, a small juncture of trees and grass and an old easy chair. A small point in space among a great expanse of glory, where the Trinity is intact because it had never been otherwise, simply tested by the fragility of youth and the passion of yearning. God lost and then found, postulated here in the open miles of our faith and need.

I think I understand why my grandparents settled here and I find, more and more, that I am like them. I belong to this cold landscape, surviving like the small creatures outside, by wit and heart. As I turn back towards the fire, I listen to the wind, tapping the glass with the resonant sound of a few small coins that are left in my heart, ready to be spent. I know that I'm where I need to be, as snow brushes the window like a kiss and I wait for the knock of wind at my door.