The Reminder In The Wind

For better or for worse, I am a man of the south. I was born in Virginia and have lived in the old Capital of the Confederacy all of my life except for three years which was split between New Orleans and a two horse farming town called Nicolsville, Alabama. Most of my vacations have been taken on the ocean in either North or South Carolina. My children live in Nashville, Tennessee and Columbia, South Carolina. But I am not just southern by geography, I am also southern by temperament. My attitudes and lifestyle were formed here. Its been a mixed bag. Everything about the south clings to you, the traditions, the food, the humidity. There is much about being a southerner that I’m proud of, but there are also things I’ve had to overcome, ways of thinking and being that borrow too much from the past. There is a tendency towards the provincial here, an us vs. them mindset. Down here, it’s either SEC football or nothing. It’s been said that you could blindfold a southerner and drop him anywhere in the country and in five minutes he could tell if he was in the south or not. I believe it. It’s in the atmoshere. It hovers. It’s a presence.

When I come to Maine, I am always aware that I am...away. It is, quite literally, in the wind. Since marrying a girl from Maine 35 years ago, I have probably spent nearly a year of my life up here now, mostly in June or July, but more recently in September and October. Everything about this place is different from what I know. But nothing is as unique as the wind. It will be difficult to explain. Mainers probably won’t know what I’m talking about because they have never known anything else. People from down south will think I’m exaggerating. 

Of course there are winds in Maine about which I know nothing. The howling gusts that savage these people over the five brutal winter months are something that I am grateful never having experienced. There isn’t enough money in the world to make me live here from November to March. In Virginia, we love our snow and brief relationship with cold. It is a quaint photo opp, a postcard scene that closes schools and sends suburban Mom’s scurrying to grocery stores to stock up on bread and milk. It’s delightful. Here, snow lost all romantic pretense about 300 years ago. No thanks.

So, basically I’m talking about the breezes of summer. There are so many different kinds of breezes in Maine and if you’re lucky you will experience all of them in a single day.

At 6 am, I wake up and walk out on the deck. Today it was 58 and the lake was drifting by from the west, the breeze gentle and forgiving. Still, I had long pajamas and a long sleeve shirt on. It was chilly. Other days when you wake up the lake is as still as glass. The trees hang motionless as the dead...but still you feel the occasional breeze in your face from out of nowhere. It’s the oddest thing. Around ten o’clock in the morning a mysterious thing happens, and it happens almost every single day...the wind picks up from across the lake and begins to stiffen. Soon the wind chime starts singing. This keeps up for thirty minutes or so and you begin the great anticipation, the answer to the question that each day presents itself...will it blow all day, or die back down? Forget the weather forecasters on the subject, they are like sorcerers from the Middle Ages, bumbling and stumbling about making fools of themselves trying to pretend they can predict the winds. Up here, the wind has a mind of its own.

The first two days we were here the wind blew all day with several gusts that sent the wind chime into musical orbit. It was nearly 84 one day, but the wind coming off the water made it feel so much colder. Yesterday it was 79 and the breezes that came were 
intermittent and surprising. But no matter what the temperature happens to be, there is always a startling coolness in the wind. It comes like a reminder to me that I am not in the south anymore. It’s Maine’s way of letting me know that I am...a guest.

There is also a distinct smell that is stirred by these breezes. Although we are a twenty minute drive from the Ocean, there is a briny ingredient in it, mixed with the deep woods aromas of pine straw, moss and balsam. Sit outside in it long enough and you become ravenously hungry despite the fact that you’ve spent all day doing nothing.

In the evening everything changes. The wind dies down, the lake settles itself, becomes like glass again. Then we wait for the sunset. It’s a long performance in several acts that begins around 7:45 and doesn’t finish up until almost 9:00. I’ve learned to never give up on a sunset here. You look at the dark, cloudy sky and are tempted to say, We won’t get one tonight. Too cloudy. But, you are almost always wrong. Some strange thing happens in the heavens...the wind stirs something up...and suddenly the show is on. It is breathtaking. You take photographs, to no avail. It cannot be captured, it seems, as if it is here just for us and no one else. We are, after all...guests. The wind reminds us every day.