Winter winds have come

For the last few days, we’ve had wind.

Those in the City would call them “extreme”, yet to us here on the side of the mountain, they’re the usual herald of Winter.

Our sustained winds have been about 25 knots, gusting to about 70 knots. They’re a little stronger than usual, moving around our heavy (on purpose) deck furniture and actually throwing several items completely off the deck.

You can hear the big gust coming: it sounds like a fully-loaded ‘gyppo’ logger’s truck, blasting down a gravel road; coming straight at you. Then the gust hits, and your world is filled with a roaring that’s both physical and emotional. If you’re not used to it, it’s disorienting: you’re shoved around by the wind, pushed and blast-chilled at the same time.

Yet all around you is alive. The trees bow down as the gust passes, the leaves are suddenly lifted from the ground in Disney-like animation – flying here and there, some colliding with you in a crackling soft slap; things you didn’t know would cause a whistle – do. Large, seemingly-immovable objects attempt to skitter like bugs before the onslaught.

In the house, the windows crackle and snap as the wind causes them to flex in their bedding. It always used to drive our Shetland Sheepdogs crazy with those random, and quite loud, bangs and pops.

I would normally be outside and reading. Yet because the wind-chill is in the negative double-digits, I cannot. Even so, I take Wheaton, our Golden Retriever, out to potty and watch as this normally tough dog quickly ‘takes care of business’ and is more than ready to head back inside to his warm spot on my side of the couch.

So I go down to our sun-room and pull out my devotions. I’m marvelling at all this cold and wind outside, and maybe feeling a bit ‘cut off’ from God because I can’t sit outside.

But God is there: I am God. I AM unchanging: hot still days, cool fresh days, warm comfortable days, and cold, harsh days; I AM always here, always.