WINDCOOKIES

The wind can be pretty playful, especially when it travels in a herd as it did before dawn this morning, when I could hear one windbeast after another (picture Tottoro x 10,000) approach the house on very loud but indistinct feet, closer and closer, then house and environs would be at the bottom of a sea of white noise (well-scrubbed air, though) for a minute or so till the beast and its long, spiraling whiplash tail had passed, when all would fall at last to calm and quiet, except... except... the next beast was coming. It was a wind stampede. Here it comes...

The vast wind herd was still passing at dawn, when, after a wildly windblown dream I got up and went down to make my tea by the big kitchen window. Looking out I saw, wrapped neatly around a bamboo fencepost, the shiny silver sleeping mat I'd taken out of the van (on the other side of the house) yesterday afternoon because some kerosene had spilled on it that I'd thought the night air would take away.

So during the night one of the big old windmonsters had hunkered its front quarters down, grabbed that mat like a dog grabs a toy, hadn't thrown it up and over the mountain as it could have, or down and into the lake; no, it had harried it like a big bone all along the walkway behind the house, turned a sharp left past the toolshed, on around the big cedar and down the stone stairs sharply to the right, then wrapped the mat neatly around the post, precisely where I'd be sure to see it shining in the morning sun when I got up and headed for tea.

Later when Echo and I were going up mountain to score some more of that firewood I've been speaking so lavishly of-- I mean how often does somebody ask you if you want part of their forest, to say nothing of all that cherry-- oh. Where was I... When we were going out I went and got the mat and put it back where I'd left it by the front door, pinning it down real good so it would air and still be there when we got back.

A short while later, after we had gotten back and unloaded the wood, I was going in at the front door when I noticed that the mat wasn't where I'd put it. I searched around the house and finally found the mat neatly rolled up by the opposite door, the door to the garden. I asked Echo if she had put it there. "Yes," she said, "after we unloaded the wood, I found the mat wrapped around the bamboo fencepost." So I decided the hell with it and put the mat back in the car.

Not long after I did that, the wind pointedly blew the heavily weighted cover off a stack of firewood it had never touched before (and only that cover; the less important ones that it sometimes blows off were left in place), so out in the edgy wind I've been wondering: does wind ever get really angry if you take away its toys? Maybe I should put that mat back out there by the front door, next to a big kite full of windcookies...?