Wind from the West

The weather changed a few days ago, on the last, leap day of February in fact. We had been having unseasonably warm temperatures for days and the clouds, as I watched them, were streaming from southeast to northwest. Then the wind, and with it the weather, changed overnight and on that Thursday was howling a bitter, vicious blow. The temperature dropped like a stone into the minus numbers. The sky cleared to a bright, pale blue. And walking into that wind brought tears to the eyes. “Blowing in the Wind,” said my weirdly echoing brain.

Bob Dylan’s lyrics are very apt today. “Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?”  I have heard those questions most of my adult life and I cannot answer any of them.

Our generation has not done well by future generations. I have been reading a book about the influence of the very aptly named Quiet Generation on culture, behaviour and beliefs. The thesis is that a small number of influencers led the way into the rebellious days of the Baby Boomers, the Vietnam War protesters, the so-called ‘Beat Generation’. Personally, I was not part of that. I was at home working part time and raising two children to school age. I paid little attention to what seemed to me an American problem, not ours. And I happily adopted any and all of the petroleum-based solutions to housekeeping chores that were then available. Plastic pants over the cloth diapers – excellent. Plastic sippy cups, Melamine plates, nylon snowsuits – all very useful.  Plastic wrap – a fine replacement for waxed paper and elastic bands. Smog was something that happened in London, England. Climate just was. It varied, but so what.

“Westron wynde when wyll thow blow. The smalle rayne downe can Rayne” is the medieval original of another popular song of the sixties. “Oh western wind …” It is the sad cry of someone far from family and familiarity, from safety.  Cryst yf my love were in my Armys And I yn my bed Agayne.  The words tie in my mind to a Mansfield poem that I think most of us learned in school.

“It’s a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds’ cries. …” the verses start and go on to describe the spring as 'merry'.  “The young corn is green, brother, where the rabbits run. It's blue sky, and white clouds, and warm rain and sun.”

 This year there may not be a merry spring. There may never be a merry spring again.

The warm and loving western wind may never blow again and a small rain hearten the crops. Instead we have unseasonable warmth, weather ‘events’, fire and flood.  The birds are not coming to our feeders as they used to do. Our native trees are not thriving. We are not thriving. In the words of the old Anglican prayer, ‘there is no health in us’.

 Perhaps if, instead of ‘flower power’ and all of that, we had put our minds to preserving our world, we might have avoided the worst that now will come. And to say, now, that I am sorry or that I was unaware is completely useless.  I am afraid that there are no answers, that too many people will die. When I look up, I see no blue in the sky.

 I have been writing and editing this post for almost a week now. It is one of the group I write with my granddaughter in mind as an audience. I started doing this when she was a baby blowing purple bubbles and now she is almost twenty-one, the age of majority everywhere. I am sorry for and unhappy about the world she will inherit and how she will find her way in it. But if I don’t post this now, I will lose the courage to do so.

 It is what it is. Sad.