Tag Archives: wind

The Storytellers

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Storytellers are very important to a culture that has no written language or any means whatsoever of recording their history or the information that has to be handed down from one generation to another. Which is why in every culture on earth, whether it be a human one like we live in, or a wet one like exists in the ocean or an animal one that lives on the land, or a much, much older one such as the one the earth and the stones and the trees have, has a storyteller. The information it takes to be a successful species has to be passed a long. That’s where storytellers come into play.

While walking by these two storytellers in the forest a few days ago I heard them explaining to this young sapling about the role she had to play as she grew up and took her rightful place in the forest. Everyone in Nature has their place and a job to do. The Earth of course stays firmly underfoot and it is the force that gives purpose to all the other things in life. The other elements such as the wind, sun, water, all have their parts to play but each individual has their responsibilities to perform as well.

And as in all cultures the young have questions about those things. They also have a lot of fear. Fear of the unknown. And a lot is unknown. The two storytellers above have been telling these stories for millennium. The one on the left with the long druid-like countenance is the most versed in the why of things, the broad overview of what our purpose is here. While the shorter, rounder one is an earth mother and she has all the practical facts of life that the younger ones need to know.

Procreation is always the single largest topic on the young ones minds and it is always the scariest to ask about. That’s why so many come to the storytellers to find out these things, you can’t ask your mother, you just can’t. How embarrassing would that be. And the other saplings are asking you about them so there’s no help there. No, the storytellers are the ones to come to.

I couldn’t hear much of the conversation as the storytellers speak in a very low voice, so low sometimes that we can’t hear it at all. The sound travels through the ground to the saplings roots like whale song through the ocean which is why there is a such a surprised look on her face. I did hear the words, gymnosperms, and male and female gametophytes and the release of large amounts of pollen, which is when the saplings branches flew up in embarrassment and her leaves flushed a pale shade of yellow.

It was at this point that I moved along as the conversation was getting to a very delicate stage and I did not want to add to the saplings awkward self-consciousness. I was just glad that the storytellers were there to help this generation of trees learn what they needed to know. Even in this day of information overload and unlimited knowledge storytellers are important.

 

Tsunami

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Many, many moons ago, before people or any living thing was alive, the earth moved. It did not just move it convulsed. It was hot, the very foundation of what would be land was a molten sea of stone and storms of incredible size raged across the surface of the planet creating waves of unbelievable height. Since there was nothing solid to hurl themselves against they crashed into each other, plumes of stone rising into the air as if trying to escape the conflagration of which they were a part.

There was no escape. Everything was held to the planet by an invisible force which gave the illusion of freedom, seeming to allow the waves to rise to nearly unimaginable heights to escape, but actually keeping them bound forever to this new earth. The tempests raged on constantly over time that could not be counted. Eons of thrashing, and compressing, compacting, contracting, tossing spumes of molten rock impossibly high into the air, sending what would someday be mountains racing across the molten seas surface, the storms raged on endlessly.

But as in all things there came a time when even this constant turmoil had to cease. Through mechanisms that we think of as rapid but actually took millennia the seas of stone began to subside. Heat was lost and the stone began its slow process of cooling and congealing until at one point, nearly impossible to believe after the unending struggle, it stopped. It was over.

On the surface of this new landscape other forces were at work, wind, erosion, freezing and thawing, all conspiring to worry the naked rock away and create the terra firma we see today. But underground it was a different matter. Since the surface above protected it from the same forces that were changing the landscape, it stayed much as it had during its birth. Openings were left on the surface that would eventually allow people to enter this subterranean world and get a small glimpse of what it must have looked like when these formations were alive and moving. Not the scale, or the immensity but a snapshot as it were, of the tsunamis and magnificent waves that roared across the openness that was the world then.

Here is a brief glimpse of a Tsunami in stone.

Life in A Cloud

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For those of you new to the blog you may not know that The Institute, the source of the many excellent but interesting posts you receive daily, sits high in the Rocky Mountains in Northern Colorado. Not Andes high or Himalayan high, but moderately high at just under 6500′.

So what, you might ask, if you were the rude type. Well, it means that at this altitude, 6500′, we get a lot more weather than folks living lower than us. What might be a rain cloud high in the sky to them may be a raging hail storm at this elevation. They’re looking at the bottom of a cloud and don’t see what’s going on inside it. Or a brisk wind down on the flats might be 70 mph up here and that will scatter your lawn chairs all over hell and back.

Lately we’ve been getting a lot of “fronts” moving in which brings clouds over and around us and often below us, usually all at the same time. I say fronts because we rarely get “backs” unless the clouds move backwards for some reason, which it does sometimes for reasons known only to itself. So I guess that could be considered a “back”.

The Institute buildings sit prominently on a point just below the summit of a world-famous mountain, it, the mountain not the Institute, being featured on many maps and even Google Earth, jutting out into space and consequently into the weather whenever it occurs. Visualize all the many imposing Schloss’s or castles you have seen in magazines, movies, and your imagination along with craggy rustic buildings set in high lonely places and mix them together and you have an idea of what The Institute aspires to look like and fails dismally at, and you have an idea of what we look like.

But getting back to the fronts we spoke of earlier. When they bring the clouds in to envelope us in misty darkness, they are loaded to the very gills with water in the form of suspended droplets completely filling the inside of that cloud. There is simply no room left for anything else. Not even lightning. It is packed tight. When the cloud moves back and forth due to some climatic reason it bangs into whatever happens to be there, like say, The Institute, and as it collides with our buildings the water inside the cloud just adheres to them. Sticks to the sides, saturating everything with impunity, and creates problems that are different than one gets in a rainstorm. The water doesn’t just fall downward and run down the sides like rain, it instantly saturates everything, walls, roof, under the eaves, into every single nook and cranny, sort of like running your house through a car wash. Think grabbing your house by its roof and plunging it into a vat of water until bubbles come out of its little chimney and you have some idea of what it’s like to live in a cloud.

Now before you think that that is a totally bad thing, it’s not. In fact it’s kind of cool. If you’ve done all your proper caulking and waterproofing that is. You can stay inside and light a fire in the fireplace without fear of accidentally burning down the forest from errant embers. You can read, pull your chair right up to the window and watch the cloud move back and forth. Drink hot tea. Think about stuff you don’t normally take time out to think about. Ponder, some. Call your neighbors and say “Hey, you got cloud?” They almost always do if you do. It’s a time to relax and say “Well I don’t have to mow the lawn today.” and just enjoy the weather.

There are other good parts too, like when the clouds move in and when they move out. If the movement happens at either end of the day, like sunrise in the shot above, you get a bonus of seeing morning in a different way. That alone makes up for some of the crap side of living in a cloud. Shortly after that image was taken the cloud moved backwards up the hill and we got wet. But for a brief moment you got to see paradise. Living in a cloud isn’t always a bad thing.

The Anvil and The Hammer

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Last eve I passed beside a blacksmith’s door
And heard the anvil ring the vesper chime;
When looking in, I saw upon the floor,
Old hammers worn with beating years of time.*

This poem comes to mind whenever I see this picture. It was taken on a stormy, stormy day on the way to Hovenweep. There was thunder and wind and the light had a deep reddish tinge to it that I hadn’t seen before. Lightning was there too, but it was too fast for my shutter, so I have to imagine it again each time I view  this image.

Storms in this part of the country don’t last all that long. They tend to be intense but over soon. They’re not like the slow-moving deep-soaking storms back in the Midwest where they last for hours. Those can be heavy but unless they’re tornado type thunderstorms they seem manageable. These western storms are not manageable. They break on you in moments with a fierceness that is almost personal and care little for the aftermath.

That is part of the allure of these big open spaces. The land is big, the views are big, the weather bigger still. This hugeness with all its wonders and dangers and intensity becomes part of you. You can move away but you cannot forget it.

The anvil rings loudest for those who listen.

* From The Anvil Of God’s Word by John Clifford