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to worry about. But alone in the house in Rappahannnock, the feeling was a little bit like the panic people describe when an earthquake hits.
I shut the water and electricity off in less than 10 minutes flat, and took off back to the road. During that short time, the wuthering wind had completely filled in my footprints, and 1 had to stumble again through the featureless snow.
When that same storm reached England it had grown longer and stronger. I have a friend who is the lighthouse keeper off the north Devon coast, and I called him on the trans-Atlantic telephone sometime later. He was a bit breathless from running down 739 steps, but he told me the storm had raged for 20 daj® on end, with force-8 gale winds, ana stones had blown to the glass at the top of the lighthouse.
When people are buffeted by strong winds for weeks on end they become dazed and disoriented. In the Highlands of Scotland, after a run of gales, I have heard the crofters complain of being “wind drunk.”
Fortunately storms are rarely as bad as that in Rappahannock, and most of the winds are beneficial. I like the cool air that slides down the hill, hugging the ground, on a hot summer evening. Open the windows, for it is the air conditioner of the mountains, sweet-smelling, fresh and free!
Then there is the breeze which blows against a wooded slope in the springtime, turning up all the new leaves to show the light undersides.
For plants and insects, the wind is an essential. Butterflies are carried long distances to their mating areas. Spiders shift hunting territory by floating on a gossamer thread. Trees spread their seeds in the fall, in preparation for the coming of spring.
I like to watch the hawks gliding overhead. They know how to use the thermal updrafts for effortless flight as they look down for meadow voles and other things. One September I spotted through high-power binoculars a flock of red-shouldered hawks, sailing along the tops of the distant peaks. It was migration time, and the birds were using the wind for a free passage down south.
We have a white, emden gander named Adam, who, since his mate
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