“I became fully aware of the wind. I heard the gusts approaching as they rattled the branches, sometimes a wave of wind to my left, sometimes a wave to my right, and sometimes the wind bore down across the open lake, the cold breeze biting at my face, causing me to hunker down.”

The Stillness of the Living Forest: A Year of Listening and Learning. Week 2: A Stiff Breeze from the Northwest. Page 25

An immersion in waves of wind, an opening of and a shift in sensory awareness occurred as soon as the second week of my year-long nature commitment. Thinking back, it might have been the first time in my life when I had simply sat, listened to, and felt the wind.

Now, six years later, the memory of that day came to mind and brought with it an intense longing to relive the experience. I wondered why the longing was so intense.

Maybe it was the beginning of December and I wanted to enjoy winter. Or maybe I had some intuitive sense that there was more to learn about the wind. Or perhaps I wanted to gauge if had changed in ways that would allow for a deeper immersion into the mysteries of the winter wind.

I began to monitor the forecast scanning strong winds. I checked my Dark Sky app which provides an hourly forecast of both wind speed and wind gusts. A week went by. Nothing. I wondered if I was going to have to give up on this idea.

Then, a winter storm in the forecast; two low pressure fronts bearing down bringing sleet, freezing rain, and ending with snow. Such fronts were almost always followed by high pressure, clear skies, tight isobars, and a strong Northwest wind, the perfect scenario for my purpose.

Monday night as the snow fell the forecast called for strong winds by morning. Anticipating the conditions, I set my alarm for 5:30 am. But when I woke up the air was calm and still. Disappointed, I rolled over and went back to sleep.

Later that morning, while running the snow blower up and down the driveway I saw the plumes of snow take flight, saw the branches above me sway. The hoped for winter wind had finally arrived.

Driving

Driving through the countryside on my way to Prompton Lake I saw the trees swaying and bending in the wind, saw swirls of wind-blown snow, like tiny white tornadoes, race across open fields, and saw the giant white windmills atop the Moosic Mountain churning busily. This was going to be perfect!

I pulled into the boat ramp parking lot, stepped out of the car, and heard the wind roaring through the trees. Across the lake I detected the harsh carruck, carruck call of a raven, a wild call, one of my favorites, a call that felt like a greeting to the wintery scene around me.

Stepping cautiously across the snow packed parking lot, I found the entrance to the West Shore Trail, and headed into the woods through a grove of tall, slender ash trees where I had to duck under heavily snow laden branches. I walked slowly over the seep, a thin sheet of spring water nourishing a patch of bright green cress, a swath of growing green amidst a white world of snow. Turning off the trail I angled through the woods out to the tip of the peninsula, to my home sit spot beneath the big black cherry tree.

1:45 p.m. Listening

I pushed the legs of my camp stool down into the snow, sat down and faced into the strong Northwest wind. I drew my first sensory awareness circle and began to look, listen, feel, and make notes of all that I observed.

The wind roared through the trees, the branches swayed, cold gusts stung my face, all the same sensations I had noticed six years ago. It was, I thought, the true and eternal winter experience.

Tseee, tseee, tseee sounded behind me. Turning, I scanned the shoreline shrubs searching for movement. Again, tseee, tseee, tseee. I looked, saw nothing, and then heard nothing.

Sometimes, that’s the way it went. I heard a bird call briefly, but couldn’t spot it. This time I recognized the call. It was a golden-crowned kinglet, a tiny gray and olive bird with delicate accents of yellow on its wings and a jaunty yellow crown, a winter warrior that used its short strong bill to glean hibernating insects and caterpillars from the bare bark and branches. I felt a sense of gratitude for the presence of another creature coping with the winter woods.

1:55 p.m. Surf

Waves of wind blew across the lake and through the branches of the trees. The waves started far upwind with a soft sigh, rose to a loud whooshing as they bore down, reached a crescendo roar above me, and then slowly faded away. I timed the cycle of the wind-waves as they crested above me; one lasted 23 seconds, the next only 15.

Sometimes the wind subsided above me, but to my left I heard gusts sighing and whooshing through the trees. To my right, across the lake where the forest was thick and continuous, where thousands of branches stuck up into the wind, the wind waves sighed, whooshed and roared.

The sounds were created by the wind moving the branches back and forth; creating vibrations in the air, longitudinal pressure waves that traveled to and vibrated my ear drums. The stronger the gusts blew, the faster the vibrations, the louder the sound, and the higher the pitch. The silent, invisible wind revealed its presence by playing the branches as if they were natural musical instruments.

When I closed my eyes the waves of wind sounded like ocean surf, like waves rolling onto a sandy beach creating a steady sound like a blend of a loud whooshing and a soft roar; a rising, falling, overlapping whooshing-roar.

A car drove down nearby Creek Road. The wind swallowed up the sound. A jetliner flew overheard. The wind swallowed the sounds. Gusts blew by my ear creating a loud crinkly sound. All I could hear was wind; a kind of a hearing and not hearing.

Then, a lull in the wind, a quiet moment. I heard one lilting per-chik-o-ree call of a goldfinch before the wind whooshed back in and drowned out all the other sounds.

2:05 p.m. Seeing

Twenty minutes of sitting still. My vision was gradually opening up, growing more acute. Instead of imposing perceptions, I began to see what was around me.

I studied three slender gray birches, their bark a flash of pale white in the sun light, their branches a dense, dark, delicate filigree against a cobalt blue sky. To my left, I spotted a small beech sapling still holding its brown leaves as beeches do. On a long horizontal branch the dry brown beech leaves shimmed and fluttered in the wind like tireless dancers.

I looked up at the tree tops where the branches of each tree seemed to have their own space and stirred silently in that space. During the strongest gusts, the branches within each tree and between the trees began to touch and clack and click. When the wind ebbed the branches withdrew back into their own silent space.

I studied the swaying movement of the trees noticed that it wasn’t a simple back and forth, but more a circular stirring; clockwise, counter clock wise, diagonal, and sometimes back and forth. The trees looked like twiggy whisks stirring a vast blue sky.

A single cloud floated in front of the low shining sun. A moment of intense gray and then the sun lit up the fringes of the cloud, edging it with luminous yellow beams for a few seconds before the wind whisked the cloud away.

Five crows flew down wind, black birds in a clear blue sky, only needing occasional flaps of their wings to fly quickly. I heard them caw, caw, caw back and forth.

The sound of their calls brought a spring memory to mind, from a day last May when I sat in this very same spot surrounded by burgeoning green leaves and an exuberant, trilling morning chorus of redstarts, yellow warblers, robins, yellowthroats and the caws of distant crows. It was hard to imagine spring amidst today’s snow and wind, yet it was reassuring to think that in just four months spring would return.

2:20 p.m. Flow

I lost track of time. Maybe I had drifted into what positive psychologists called a “flow” state, a state characterized by complete focus on the present moment, by the merging of action and awareness, by letting go of the concerns of the little self and opening up to the patterns and purposes of big nature.

Perhaps the sensory awareness circle helped to create this flow state. The task was manageable. All I had to do was picture myself as a dot in the middle of a circle on my notebook page and then write down everything that I saw, heard, felt and smelled near and far for ten minute intervals. Yet, at the same time the task was challenging; a listening for more subtle sounds, for the changes in sounds, for more distant sounds; a looking at levels and layers of trees and branches, of grasses and weeds, of bushes and shrubs, of rocks and mosses, of flora and fauna.

2:25 p.m. Old Hands

Gazing at the swaying tree tops I felt myself slipping into that state where I saw more than objects, where I saw patterns and themes. I noticed how gracefully, how naturally, how comfortably each tree moved with the wind, bending easily to match the strength of each gust and then settling back to an upright position.

The trees, I realized, were old hands at this. They had centuries, eons, of experience learning to live with the wind, a potentially destructive force. The fiber and structure of each tree was tuned to coexist with the wind.

Each species of tree seemed to have its own formula, its own style of adaptability. The tall thick trunked, thick branched cherry trees swayed and stirred less than the thinner trunked maples. The gray birches with their slender trunks and thick lacy branches moved the most of all. And the younger and thinner of each type of tree bent and swayed more than the older more mature trees.

I could feel the awareness of how trees moved transfer from the world of nature to the world of human affairs. We were old hands too. We carried ancient wisdom of how to stand and move with the forces of gravity and wind. I felt a wave of comfort flow through my being, felt myself relax into the wind, felt myself connect to my own highly honed human adaptability.

And, I thought, in a more figurative sense, we must also have an equally well-honed adaptability to bend and sway in response to the forces of circumstance, fate and fortune. If the trees were an example, then there were probably many, many individual variations on the theme of adaptability.

2:35 p.m. Wind Chill

As I continued to look up at the trees the wind subsided. I took advantage of the quiet moment to turn and face the sun, to take in the direct warmth of its rays.

According to Dark Sky the wind was from the NW at 17 mph with gusts up to 33 mph. The temperature was 26. The wind chill or “feels like” temperature was 16. I knew that wind chill was a controversial notion based on the amount of heat transfer of someone walking barefaced into the wind at 3.1 miles per hour over an open field. I knew that feeling cold was a subjective experience and that heat loss varied from person to person.

I also knew that I was sitting still on an exposed elevation facing the wind. I felt cold. The last ten minutes of my hour was going to be hard.

I shifted my chair away from the wind and continued to face the sun and take in its warmth. I was determined to make it through the full hour.

The wind blew hard, the strongest gust yet. Chunks of snow flew from the branches. One chunk dropped down, landed inside my coat and slid down the back of my neck. Three crows flew laboriously up wind. The tree shadows lengthened. The late afternoon fading blueish light spread across the peninsula.

My watch read 2:44. I watched the last few seconds ticked by. Finally my hour was up.

Relieved, I stood, packed up my gear and trudged back through the snow. As I walked, I imagined blasting my car heater at max.  As I drew closer to the parking lot I pictured myself at home, sitting by the fireplace, sipping a cup of steaming tea, listening to the winter wind roar outside.

This sit spot took place at Prompton State Park on December3, 2019.

You can read more about my year of sit spot adventures in The Stillness of the Living Forest: A Year of Listening and Learning available at Amazon.com.