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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: Homestead <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Homestead] Verlyn's world breathes
  • Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 06:33:58 -0500

THE RURAL LIFE
Summer Wind

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Published: July 18, 2008
For the past few hours, the wind has been rising and falling, the precursor of a storm coming in from the west. When the wind climbs, a kind of elation blows through the house — it’s the hushing sound of the leaves outside and the way the breeze sweeps the floors and lifts the curtains and slams the doors. The dogs snap to and look around when it gusts. And when the wind drops, it seems to drop us — the dogs and me — into the trough of an ordinary summer day.

I spent a humid morning recently in the barnyard with the farrier, who was shoeing Remedy, my quarter horse. Remedy was dozing the way a customer sometimes dozes in a barber’s chair. First one hoof, then another. Heel and toe trimmed and rasped and the shoe nailed home, followed by more rasping. The other horses stood in the corral, lower lips drooping in the heat. A twist of wind came across the pasture, up from the highway, stirring the sumac along the fenceline. The farrier stopped and stretched his back. Remedy shifted his feet and looked intently at the mares. I turned my face into the wind and recoiled the lead rope.

The breeze this afternoon is like respiration, in and out pretty steadily with a prolonged sigh now and then. In the pauses, when the wind is still, I can feel the expectation of a storm building. This isn’t simply the quiet of an afternoon. It’s the quiet in which something is about to happen.

I hope it’s a good storm, a high wind, rain slanting across the pastures, geese splashing in the sudden puddles, chickens huddled inside their house trying to keep the wind from getting under their feathers. For a moment, the house I’m in seems to inflate, to fill with air that was just outside a few seconds ago. For a moment, it feels like a sail filling, lifting, as though this cranky old farmhouse might loose its mooring and reach toward the sea.

VERLYN KLINKENBORG

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/opinion/18fri4.html?ref=opinion


  • [Homestead] Verlyn's world breathes, Gene GeRue, 07/18/2008

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