WHEN IT BLOWS IT SUCKS – The Winds of a Lifetime

Funny I should be working on a post about wind just as Harvey, one the US’s most destructive hurricanes on record slams into the Texas Gulf Coast. I’m in awe of storms like this; some slightly warped part of me wishes I could experience such awesome power first-hand—without, of course, suffering the consequences.

Come to think of it, I have indeed experienced some pretty amazing winds in my lifetime—some even topping Harvey’s 130-mile-per-hour best.

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To encourage my readers and the kids in their lives to appreciate the wonder of wind, I often suggest this little exercise: find a draft-free room, light a candle and place it in a corner. Then sit down on the floor five or six yards away and blow toward the candle.

You’ll wait a second or two as your breath, like a wave, rolls toward the flame and, if your aim’s any good, makes it flicker. It just shows how much like a liquid this magical, invisible, life-fueling substance we call air acts, ebbing, flowing, swirling, pouring into voids.

But that’s just a parlor trick. What about the real-life impact winds have on us?

STANDING ON PRESIDENTS
I once led a group of ten- and eleven-year-old boys on a climbing adventure in New Hampshire’s beautiful White Mountains. The goal: to summit a few of the “Presidentials,” a range of 5,000-plus-foot peaks named for U.S. presidents.

The culmination was scaling the legendary Mt. Washington. Now, at 6,288 feet, this upstart’s no Rainier or McKinley. But it does have its own claims to fame, including its prodigious winds.

Signs at the trailheads warn those unaware that climbers die on these slopes all the time, even in summer. That, in the course of the four or five hours it takes to get to the top, conditions can easily change from light, 85-degree summer breezes to a 40-degree November gale.

PHOTO: Erin Paul Donovan

In fact, when we reached the summit we could see that the only thing keeping some of the buildings from being blown away during the worst storms were the steel cables holding them down like a load on a flat-bed truck. This unassuming peak held the record, until 2010, for the highest straight-line wind velocity ever observed on earth: 231miles per hour.

The day my campers and I climbed Mt. Washington the winds only kicked up to about 50 miles per hour. But it was enough to require considerable effort—and a bit of inclination—to make any headway. It was enough to show those kids how powerful a force wind can be, as both ally and adversary.

PHOTO: Jose Azel / Getty Images

    The roof of the next-door apartment building, 
    complete with compressors and vent stacks, 
    lay across my lawn.

NOT IN KANSAS ANY MORE
The sultry afternoon of June 14, 1981, a tornado churned from southwest to northeast across the Twin Cities Metro, generating winds approaching 200 miles per hour. I’d been repairing a window frame on the second floor of my South Minneapolis home when I first noticed the warning signs: an eerie calm and dark, greenish skies. And then the rain and hail.

It was when I saw debris starting to swirl and heard that storied freight-train rumble that I knew. I grabbed my dog, a candle and matches, and the portable radio and headed for the basement. On the way down, I remember distinctly the feeling in my ears, like being inside a vacuum.

PHOTO: Ernie Melby

It was all over in about two minutes. Thank God, my house appeared to be intact, but when I stepped outside it was a different story. My garage listed to one side, most of its shingles sucked off. The flat, tar-and-gravel roof of the next-door apartment building, complete with compressors and vent stacks, lay across my lawn. Trees and power lines were down. And one corner of the old, solid stone church on the corner lay in ruins.

Ever since I was a boy, I’ve had a fascination with tornadoes. And now I could say I’d been in one. Ironically, I have yet to actually see one.

    Even my trusty “water-resistant” Timex watch 
    proved no match for the pervasiveness of the 
    incredible blast.

THE SOUND AND THE FURY
My buddies and I had just begun what was supposed to be a simple, relaxing overnight paddle trip down the beautiful upper St. Croix River. Unfortunately, we got a late start, so by the time we’d loaded the canoes and pushed off the last glow of daylight was all but gone.

Feeling our way down the river in the dark, we bumped and scraped our way through a series of class-one rapids and began searching the shore with flashlights for a decent campsite. Fortunately, we spotted what looked like the ideal place on
a small, sandy island.

As we pitched camp and started working on dinner, the southwest sky flickered with lightning. Big deal, I thought; what are the chances it will come our way?

Well, come our way it did. We’d finished our late meal and were enjoying an after-dinner drink around the fire when it hit. The only shelter we had was our tents, which worked fine on the torrential rain, but were no match for the wind.

ILLUSTRATION: Encyclopaedia Britannica

In what meteorologists call a downburst,* our little islet was suddenly stomped
on by 50- to 60-mile-per-hour winds, which ripped out our tent stakes, bent the aluminum poles and drove water through both fly and tent. We had to yell to be heard over the wail of those winds and explosions of thunder.

Even worse, the monster stalled right over us, battering us for a good ten minutes—plenty of time to contemplate the very real danger of the trees all around us, anchored only in the loose sand, falling and crushing us, or suddenly conducting 100 million volts of electricity into us through their roots.

When it was over, the only things left supporting the saturated nylon were our cowering, shivering bodies. We might as well have just sat out in the open; everything we had was soaked. Even my trusty “water-resistant” Timex watch proved no match for the pervasiveness of that incredible blast.

        The wind had not only stirred up those 
        challenging waves; it also fanned the 
        cooling process.

TO THE CORE  
Wind can do its dirty work in more ways than just with brute force. I was canoeing with seven friends across Tuscarora Lake in northern Minnesota’s incredible Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. It was a cool fall morning and the wind had started to whip up some pretty big waves for a lake of this size.

But we were mostly seasoned canoeing veterans; if we followed best practices for these conditions, it was nothing we couldn’t handle. I guess the key word there is “followed,” because within ten minutes, instead of sticking together, we found our three canoes well beyond shouting distance of each other.

Long story short, a couple of paddlers lost their focus. In a few seconds their canoe got caught broadside to a wave and turned turtle. Fortunately, our second canoe noticed their predicament and went to the rescue.

We managed to haul the shivering canoeists and their partially baled out craft to a nearby campsite, but by this time Win, a wiry guy with no insulating fat on his frame, was showing signs of hypothermia.

In this case, the wind had not only stirred up those challenging waves; it also fanned the cooling process, sucking the warmth out of Win’s body faster than it could produce it. Fortunately, by keeping him awake, sandwiching him between two warm bodies inside a sleeping bag, and feeding him hot liquids, we were able to avert tragedy.

(Ironically, later that afternoon, we were harnessing that same treacherous wind in makeshift sails to propel us effortlessly across another lake.)

So, what are the most memorable scrapes you’ve had with wind? Tornadoes? Hurricanes? Sailing fiascos? Anyone ever flown through the eye of a hurricane?

“The wind is us-- it gathers and remembers all our voices, then 
sends them talking and telling through the leaves and the fields.”  
TRUMAN CAPOTE

* In 1999, a sharp line of storms swept across the BWCAW, unleashing a broad, nearly continuous band of downbursts—called a derecho—flattening millions of trees like the sweep of an immense, malevolent hand. It wiped out some 40 percent all the mature trees in the million-acre protected area.

THE OTHER SIDE OF CLOUDS

Just about all of us, at one time or another, have played that game where you try to find cloud forms that look like objects, animals or faces. Right? Half the fun is trying to describe what we see to someone else—someone who may have a completely different interpretation.

And there’s more to clouds than their shapes. Their swirls, wisps and whorls paint the skies in telling styles: cirrus and stratus, contrail and cumulus.

Each tells a different story, foretelling what clear skies never divulge: the gathering storm, sailors’ delight or plight. Tinted red and gold by setting or rising sun, clouds stun us with their beauty. When excited, they swell gray and black in rising warm air, and then, pierced by lightning, shower their gifts of rain and ions on the expectant earth.

Take a different point of view and it's like seeing clouds as if for the very first time.

But, like just about any aspect of Nature, we tend to see only one facet of the magnificence of clouds. Take a different point of view and it's like seeing clouds as if for the very first time.

TIPTOEING THROUGH POOLS OF LIGHT

When I fly, I like a window seat, especially when taking off on a rainy day. I love that moment when we break through the clouds to clear sky and sun. It’s the epitome of escapism, as if it were my spirit given wing, rising through a billowy white down comforter from my still-sleeping body.

On darker nights, I tiptoe through pools of warm, golden light where cities shine through.

Once I’m above the clouds, I surrender myself to a panorama of wonders limited only by the horizon of my imagination. I soar between peaks of cloud “mountains.” I look for real mountains poking up through the clouds, the view of their summits reserved that day just for me. At night, I bathe in the cool glow of moonlight on the cloudscape below. Or, on darker nights, I tiptoe through pools of warm, golden light where cities shine through.

A LOOMING MONSTER

Last year I was flying home from the East Coast. It was nearly dark and we were over central Wisconsin. I noticed an immense thunderhead just ahead of us on my side of the aircraft. I felt the plane’s size and mine shrink as we approached the still-rising monster and I realized it towered above our 35,000-foot cruising altitude.



I felt the plane’s size and mine shrink as we approached the still-rising monster

Spots of flickering light dappled the surface of the looming mass, betraying the violence deep within. At any given instant there would be three or four lightening flashes. I watched, transfixed, as we passed, gradually turning, then craning my neck back until I could no longer see the light show through the window behind me. (I learned later that this storm—so beautiful from above—had spawned a series of tornadoes that proved deadly for those on the ground.)

NOTE: As we passed the storm, I’d looked around me a couple of times at my fellow travelers. I like to do this, to see how other people react to things. I guess I was also looking for some validation of what I’d been seeing, someone to share the moment with. Alas, some were reading, a few watched DVDs, others slept. Not one was looking out the window. I felt sorry for them…and blessed.

THE TRUTH OF SNOW

I've just enjoyed my second metro-crippling blizzard of this young winter of 2010-11. This one, billed as the blizzard of the decade, has just left cocksure Boston speechless.

It's been an opportunity for me to try on, once more, the baggy coat of acceptance, a garment whose fit depends on not its own but the wearer's measure.

I'd spent Christmas with my daughter and her family at the home of her in-laws in Maine. My flight home from Boston was scheduled to leave Monday afternoon. When I heard the storm was plowing its way up the coast, I decided to drive down Sunday and beat the monster.

I chose not to fear nor curse the uncertainty, but to look deeply into it, marveling at the darkness of so much white.

The strategy didn't work. By the time I hit Portland, I was right in the face of the blizzard. Crawling down I-95, I felt as much as steered my way through the whiteout, nudged by gusting crosswinds. The ghostly tail lights of the semi in front of me became my guide and my meditation. I chose not to fear nor curse the uncertainty, but to look deeply into it, marveling at the darkness of so much white.

Monday morning, safe at my daughter's home in Boston, my reverie lapsed into frustration when Delta told me they wouldn't rebook that afternoon's canceled flights until Thursday or Friday, even though I knew thousands of people would be taking off from Logan Tuesday. The bile of indignation welled in my throat when the agent implied that, by not being willing to consider an alternate airport for departure—like Philadelphia—I was being inflexible. I was getting angry and I didn't like it.

I swallowed hard, trying to unclench my right to be in control. I told the woman I realized this wasn't her fault and hung up. I considered whether this was any more a personal affront than the blizzard itself had been. I realized the situation simply was what it was, that, in fact, it was no more or less than exactly what it was meant to be. I made up my mind I would enjoy it.

I realized the situation was no more or less than exactly what it was meant to be.

With this conversion from combatant to observer, I found my fate curiously changed. My very next try—this time unencumbered by expectation—rewarded me with a new flight where none had been available just minutes before, a flight not on Thursday or Friday, but Wednesday.

What I could easily have seen as an ordeal, I've embraced as a bonus, an unexpected two-day extension of my Christmas vacation. I've marveled at the beauty of all this snow. Though my daughter's still in Maine, I've enjoyed spending time in her lovely home. I've bonded with Cleo, her cat. I've read, watched a good movie and slept late. I've walked her daily route into town and enjoyed a leisurely latte at her favorite coffee shop, sitting next to the display of her handcrafts on the wall. And I've discovered that an extended texting conversation with her, despite— or perhaps because of—the sparing choices of words and abbreviations, can be warm and witty.

And I've written this. This too is a wonderful gift, a gift that derives from nothing more than the way things fall and swirl, like so many exquisite snowflakes, in this matrix where intention, acceptance and possibility intersect.