In this week's episode, notes from Bill Felker's 40 years of observing what happens in nature.
Bill Felker: I'm up at seven in the morning, sitting at the south window. The sky is half dawn. Light and dark equal through the fast gray nimbus stratus clouds and the storm. The wind is hard from the southeast. The pattern of the gusts and rain creates an audible shape of its own: harsh like pebbles or hail, then soft sweeping and landing, retreating. After a few minutes, quiet, then, more squalls come pelting the house, surging at me passionately. The sound measuring the speed, the size, and the quantity of the force. The most savage attacks shatter the raindrops against a window. My excitement increases with the intensity of the pounding that almost becomes too, too fervent.
My excitement increases with the intensity of the poundingBill Felker
Then...then the pressure suddenly eases. The cloudburst ends. I could see the tall birches swaying a block away, and instead of the wind, given voice and revealed by the rain, instead of its insistent drumming and clattering, I hear it rushing softly in the bare branches and singing in the crevices and corners of the building around me. A few feet from where I sit, chickadees dive and hang at the feeders, glide with the rhythm of the air, at ease in the swell of the winds.
And I leave the storm and come into my own warmth. I'm here surrounded by yellow pine and old brick with a fire in the woodstove, collected and safe.
I'll be back again next week with notes for the third week of early winter. In the meantime, get up early one morning, wrap up in a blanket, and sit by the window quietly in the warmth.
Bill Felker contributes to newspapers nationwide, including the "Yellow Springs News." Bill resides in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
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