May 18, 2005
Mariah

Away out here they have a name for wind and rain and fire, The rain is Tess, the fire’s Joe and they call the wind Mariah.

So sang the Kingston Trio back in ’59 in a hit lifted from Paint Your Wagon but this spring the lyric fails to inspire nostalgia.  This is not the right moment to wax rhapsodic about air currents.  I’m up to my ears with Mariah.  Would somebody please turn off the wind machine? 

Did you ever try and shake the girl that sticks like glue at a cocktail party?  Droning on and on until you’re ready to scream, she forces you to escape conversational hell by finding an escape, “I need to freshen my drink.”  So it’s duck and run for the bar and when the gin and tonic is back up to the brim you turn around and find yourself nose to nose with the same bore supposedly ditched on the other side of the room. That’s Mariah.  And it’s time for the lady to get lost. 

Were wind on my Top Ten list home would be Kansas or near Casper.   Since a wind-aholic I’m not life here is perfect, save spring.  You’d be hard pressed to name anyone wanting to move his or her family to a place where, “ We can be closer to the wind.”  

Not to disagree with Bob Dylan but there are no answers, my friend, blowin’ in the wind.  Garbage cans, errant golf shots, and things that make me sneeze are in the air, but no answers, only questions.  “Is this a two club or a one club wind?” being the most frequently asked interrogative on local fairways.  Tennis players find themselves defenseless against spring gales.  Hikers on the Serpents Trail worry about being blown over the edge and bicycle riders would, given the choice, much prefer changing a flat to a day spent pedaling into the wind. To a cyclist, head winds seem to reach down and suck the marrow from the bones as it forces a rider to expend twice the energy to move half as fast.  

Last Saturday three of us, half fast peddlers all, set out on what was intended to be a leisurely roll over East Orchard Mesa.  The wind was in our face all through the orchards and vineyards but we pressed on secure in the knowledge the wind would be at our back on the return trip.  Wrong.  The wind gods are evil.  Over pancakes at the Palisade Café, our table offered a perfect view of the flag across the street ceasing it’s Westerly waving only to stand at attention in the opposite direction thanks to another dirty trick from Mariah. 

Not all wind is bad.  Come mosquitoes and the, “hot enough for ya?” season of June, July and August we’ll be begging for a breeze.  But life during the summer finds us becalmed in the desert with wind nowhere to be found. 

Why is that?  It was all explained by a cowboy in Harrison, Nebraska, a hamlet on the Wyoming border.  “All wind is manufactured by giant turbines at a wind factory outside Casper,” he said with a straight face, “and when you folks in Colorado have weeks of wind it means the factory is shipping you new product or you’re sending the old stuff back for re-charging.  Think about us poor folks living close to the factory, with wind shipments going to places around the globe twenty-four hours a day it means we put up with gales around here 12 months a year.  You guys living in Colorado are lucky.”  Makes as much sense as any other theory. 

Local legend has it the winds cease when the swan on the Mesa has a broken neck.  And I say, let the death watch begin.