Dirt Under My Fingernails: Out Like a Lion

Monday, March 31, 2014

Out Like a Lion

Trying not to dislodge today's detritus from my hair until it is time to take a bath and send it down the drain.

It was that kind of day.

The kind of day that brings to life the tales of our ancestors about the hard life on the Great Plains and how the wind made settlers go mad. Not just one day, but a month of days. Swarming warming gusts from the South turning on a thin dime to thrust the self same dust against your turned cheek. Doors taking on a manic mind of their own slamming and straining wildly open and shut in an attempt to clobber anyone or thing passing through. The damage is cumulative; the eyes fill; the ears numb; the mind....snaps.

This is what today's south gale sounds like inside a 100' greenhouse covered with a 24'sheet of doubled polyethylene. The rolling and popping would be refreshing if I were looking up a freshening mainsail catching the breeze. I have far less faith in the durability of this plastic through sustained force. You cannot hear yourself think.

And this is what the battering, flapping, banging sounds like outdoors. This is what whittles progress to a nubbin, what shortens working days, and makes one long for sundown to bring outside labor mercifully to a halt. Exhausted, one wonders why on earth anyone would put a greenhouse atop a hill in this country.

And. When the wind shifts and the horizon dims and every little particle is shifted from its rest to pummel the landscape and facing the wind blasts you physically. Your land becomes desolate in your eyes and today a wasteland.

That is March leaving as a lion. I fervently pray for this land, this countryside, for gentle April to drench us all and bring relief from and forgetfulness of ferocious March.