A Dancey Sort of Day

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What kind of a dancing day, you might ask?

I would tell you it is a fast waltz day, or a polka even, a windy “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down” kind of day.

I don’t usually like wind. It ruffles my feathers, rubs me the wrong way, and makes me downright cranky. It throws things about, chairs go flying, it makes a lot of noise and seems like it really will blow the house down. Right now, I want to go outside and make friends with this wind. It’s here for the whole day, so I better get used to it, stop muttering complaints and maybe even learn to like it.

I have to lean in, just walking across the meadow. The wind is about 45mph here right now, with 55 mph gusts. Uncomfortable at best. What am I thinking coming out in this blustery gale of a day?

I head for the pines where I know it will sound like the ocean, and be more soothing.

It is a bit inadvisable to be under trees in this kind of wind, but I have chosen an old friend, Grandmother Ponderosa Pine. She is about 300 years old, so she knows how to stand tall. She has seen a wind storm or two. She knows how to be solid, and how to bend just the right amount to stay intact. She grounds herself in her roots deep down into the Mother.  She centers herself as her needle covered branches sway overhead, while their fast moving shadows dance on the ground. Shadows of needles without the detail. Just lines and odd shapes.

There are countless dancers here – grasses, trees, clouds and shrubs, all moving to a different rhythm depending on their heights, as so many wild currents sweep by.  It is a contemporary dance.

Clouds say,

“Dance with the wind!  Love the wind!  Be the Wind.”

So, I gave in.

I twirled and spun in the whistling wisps, bounded about in the billowy bluster, sprinted and galloped with the gales at my back, sailed through the trees like I didn’t have feet.

And suddenly I was it, and it was me and the force of its breath was setting me free.

I stopped for a moment, just let myself be, and all that I felt was surprising me. Nature’s breath and I were one, and inside my heart felt just like the sun. Warm and fresh, I felt at ease, and all I could do was fall to my knees. Inside my body as I had flown, all negative thoughts from me had blown – up and away and all around, so all I was left with, was Light and sound.

Loving the wind is easier today. Dancing with it was fun. Practicing being with it without any resistance was phenomenal. Then actually being it. The energy came inside my body, becoming my body – not as a chill, but as substantial energy, feeling like Light and Love, transmuting all negativity. For a moment, I really felt one with the wind.

Thank you Clouds.

I love the wind in the cattails and willows. They are an interesting couple, and dance differently to the same music. The cattail stems from last year are stiff, while willow, the most flexible of all, bowing all the way over, and back, looking like wild waves.

Even the rock energy is tussled a bit – they just express themselves a little differently. Muuuuch sloooooweeer.

This wind reminds me we are going to have to thin a lot this year. It is sad to cut trees, but I talk with each one. Only the ones who agree come down. They decide. They make themselves known, if you listen. Trees know what a healthy forest is. They are willing to fall, become rabbit cover with their fallen branches, and then soil microbe food as they decompose. As times get dryer, fewer trees will make it anyway. We cut clumps of old unhealthy trees and some small ones to create fire breaks, which also become nice meadows for deer and elk and bunnies. Then the remaining trees will have a little more water to share. This drought continues although we had a fairly good snow pack. It is melting too early and too fast, and I think our one lone beaver died, so the creek will probably dry up, or go way down to a trickle. Hopefully enough water will remain to keep the frogs and fish alive. But back to today….

Swaying into each other – the young ones are only about a hundred years old. They can still bend, so they are dancing in to each other. I take pictures to show the wind, but of course it is not a video, so they just look still. They are not still.

A free form dance kind of a day today. Wind really keeps you in the moment. It steals your attention and keeps you present.

The light dances on water

The wind whips across the water, making big waves and tiny ones.

The wisp of wind and the sun make sparkles on the water. My mother used to call those little lights, dancing faeries.

On a not so windy day, I found these dancers at Bosque del Apache where we went for our anniversary. For those of you following numbers right now, we had our 11^th on the 11^th of Feb.

Now having tea as I tell you my story.  It was a lovely, windy, dancey sort of day.