There Is Music in the Wind Tonight

The wind has been blowing hard for days and days, and during that time I have been trying to shrug off some reflective blues. You know the kind you get when you are trying to go to sleep, and you start thinking of all the things you have done wrong in your life. When I get on a depressing train of thought like that, I stop and tell myself sternly to "Cut it out! It is water over the dam! I can't go back and change things! " There don't seem to be any second chances in this life. If there were, I would probably make the same mistakes again. I groan and fling myself over on my other side, and the wind slams the metal awning outside with a huge rattle and bang, as if saying, " I told you so!"

Then I think along a new, but still gloomy, tract. The wind is still banging branches on the roof of my trailer and starts a shrill moaning around corners. It shouts at me again with those loudly slamming awnings, and says, "Stop that!" So I do.

I get up and brew myself a cup of Sleepytime tea, and sip it while I watch Craig Ferguson or an old movie on TV. But I keep one ear tuned to the sounds that are blowing outside on the wind. There are things out there not battened down, and I can hear them rattling  away to be trapped in the arroyo. Little animals may be sneaking into my yard to eat spilled dog and cat food by the shed. Or I might hear coyotes singing in quavering complaints over on the hillside. Sometimes I hear the hoofsteps of the herd of eight or ten horses that roam free around here as they come by to look for fresh grass or for water from the tub I keep filled by the spigot. No human being lives near enough to me that I could hear their voices. If I did, they would be intruders and my dogs would bark. My noises are all from natural origins. My dogs have no fear of them, and sleep quietly inside on their beds by the heater.

After a while I hear those noises combining to become music. Dramatic, bombastic music! I wish I could write it down to be played again by an orchestra, a full symphony orchestra. My composition would be loud, without the rhythmic beat I would prefer. Songs of nature don't usually harness themselves into dance rhythms. What it does for me is blast my gloomy thoughts right out of my head into the wild winds, and shatters them into tiny pieces on their way to exile on the farthest star in the sky.

And so, I finish my tea, and reclaim my spot in bed from several purring cats, and soon, in spite of my trailer still rocking in the wind, I am also purring, probably snoring, with them.