Prologue
I’ve been thinking a lot lately, mostly about the wind. The way it sneaks up on you, and in a matter of seconds can shift from a close friend to an old rival. How it can make the day, with its comforting warmth and gentle presence. How too much or the wrong temperature can send an already pleasant day packing. I can see the blades of grass and the leaves in the trees quivering at its beck and call. The sand sprinkled about our rocky shores, and surely even the swells in the ocean bow down to the wind, at least to some extent.
I always fondly recall that summer breeze, especially on cold nights like these. On hot nights even, although they’re far from me now, I can still feel the perspiration weighing down the sheets, and the reprieve at cracking open the single pane window that loomed over me. Certainly at times, the wind can be a good friend.
However, the more time I spend pondering it, the more its versatility and its inhuman triumph emerge to me.
The wind has held a near unbreakable stranglehold on human history. Our early ancestors built their homes into the landscape, using what nature had laid before them as their best defense against it. They quickly learned the basics of ventilation, comfort being paramount to the human condition. Cleverly placed entry ways, earthen humps, and crude tunnels through the ground were man’s earliest attempts at taming the wind. And why not try to tame such a creature? Often, the wind would warn these early humans of nature’s wrath, the strong breeze heading the storm directing them to cover. Perhaps it was in these times, sitting out a storm, that the first people began to have these thoughts, to formulate a strategy to harness the wind, and bring the constant companion further into the fold.
As we know, man saw some success in that pursuit. Cultures, peoples across the globe, independently or otherwise, began patching together sheets of animal skin or plant matter to take advantage of the abundant resource, and to fuel the other all consuming human desire - exploration. Yes, sails, the mighty sail, paving man’s way over the dark depths of the ocean, blazing new trade routes in a growing world, and spurning the dauntless expanse of a mostly indignant and unappreciative species.
They did however, and I believe this to be accurate, at least develop an appreciation for the power of the wind at this time. With that appreciation grew disdain, since although the strong breeze warned to take cover when on dry land, traversing the seas it became an omen of death. Surely, one was lucky to interpret such a message when close to shore, when there was still a chance to gain shelter, or rescind a recently issued order to disembark. But even more surely still was the dread that washed over a man along with that strong breeze when there was no land in sight. Gazing back at their old friend would often reveal a sky as dark as the fear growing in their hearts and minds. It was here that man was most often exposed to the elements, where he was likely first faced with the indiscriminate fear of the unknown, the terror that is the deep. Alas that fear followed man back onto dry ground and never left his side.
Yes, man’s... and surely mine own fate lie forever entwined with the wind, for there isn’t a doubt that it has had a hand at every turn. It was wind, after all, that sent the disenfranchised Puritans off course on their journey to the New World, and founded them Plymouth, Massachusetts. Was it a blessing of the wind, to deliver them here, or a cruelty? Nearly half of those who landed on this damned rock perished in the first winter. The cold wind and foul winter coming over them like none they had seen, the terror laid a blanket over the settlement they had believed was born and died on their voyage across the Atlantic. They slowly learned it never left them.
With the gentle winds of the spring and the gentle hands of the long-dwelling and dutiful tribes that already inhabited the land, these pilgrims were able to plant their feet. Although not all at once, the area grew and prospered. The Massachusetts Bay Colony revered the wind. It filled the masts of many a ship, steered by many a man, aimed directly towards Plymouth and Boston, in the New England. More began making the perilous journey when word reached back to Europe, and they haven’t stopped since.
The new docks and piers attracted all ships, peddling all wears. From spices to rums, grain and fruit, silks and fine linens, they were all traded on those Boston Docks. Most disgustingly, men, women and children, forced to fear the wind, to see the terror of the deep and the tempests that dance across its endless expanse with cruelty waiting on the other end.
Although the wind did not entirely guide their ships, it’s another of my beliefs that the winds capacity to inhibit travel made it possible for the blight to scourge Ireland, perhaps the only reason why the Boston Irish, and by extension myself came to be.
When I picture the wind it isn’t only man’s history that I see; its man, I see myself in the ever changing aura that floods our precious landscape. Whether in the calm breeze or in the strongest and most destructive of hurricanes I see what has been and what forever will be. For although that strong breeze may very well indicate a tempest on the horizon, it has a just equal shot of banishing the clouds and reintroducing the sun. Maybe this unpredictable god that walks amongst us has been permanently imprinted in our psyches so that when there is a strong breeze, our skin ripples, our senses and our emotions are heightened. I see our individuality, as there is never a gust that moves a leaf in the same fashion, and there is rarely a sustained push with the same duration. That being said, they can follow the same rhythm, repeat similar patterns and evoke the same emotions, but they’re never exactly the same.
I know that the earth came first, before man. That it was first inhabited by the wind. Because of this I know that man was born into a world of cruelty. Was it not then man’s prerogative to adopt this cruelty, to make it their own? To work and mold this cruelty into a more suitable form for his own utility? It is with certainty that I can say that man did not invent it, but much like the animals, the wind, the flame, he took it and made it his own. Man, the crafter of tools, the engineer of himself, the embodiment of wind, the master of fate - took cruelty, and made it human.
