White Cap Wind

The wind picked up last night. It swirled huffing around the house and made it impossible to ignore it as it pushed a chair along the deck clearly in sight of us all as we sat in the cozy kitchen. We reassured the animals that it was just a wind that would quickly blow itself out. The words spoken out loud were as much a comfort to us as to them.

My sister says the weather reports gusts up to 45 miles per hour. When does a gust become something less benign sounding, I wonder. Back on the Pentland Firth, when we see white caps on the water, or white horses as some call them because they do look like the flashing manes of a horse running, we know the wind is about 50 miles per hour. It may be slightly less on shore, but the white horses let us know that we need to bundle up against the wind, park cars pointing into the wind, and hold on to car doors when we get in and out of the cars.

After all my years as Hoosier, it struck me as odd that I should try to make sense of the weather here in the cornfields by what I have so recently learned in a country now very far away. Today in the first officially very cold day of winter, I am content to see the universal signs of genuine winter: the cats lie down with the dogs. Instead of snuggling in the sun spots and lounging luxuriously around the kitchen, the cats have selected their favorite dogs and curled up in tight little balls on their dog blankets. The dogs compete with each other for the best bed spots and move into a rotation to keep spots warm: as one dog goes out, another moves into the spot he left. Some things are universal.