Wind racing through bare trees late Sunday afternoon insisted on being heard. The chorus made for an absolutely glorious backyard evening. Whoosh and whisper suggested passages from great American literature. There was Huckleberry Finn reveling in a thunderstorm over the Mississippi. “Whirr” said one chorus and I remembered the Emperor Yuan in Ray Bradbury’s “The Flying Machine” as he marveled at the miracle of a sunrise from his garden close against the Great Wall.
I had entered the back yard on an errand from Grandma Nancy. She wanted some hedges planted and had set her potted prayers at strategic intervals along the fence. And so as I dug holes, stacatto of the shovel’s steel biting the earth below seemed like brass punctuating murmurs from the wind section above. I paused to listen. And to feel. Like Ishmael atop the Pequod’s mast, I felt “surely, all this is not without meaning ….”
The first of a series of predicted weather fronts had arrived right on schedule and threatened to fulfill a most incredible prophecy: Those who monitor such things had broadcast warnings of impending blizzards. Blizzards? But was it not a lovely evening? Did I not till the earth in my shirtsleeves?
“Surely, all this is not without meaning,” Ishmael had mused, and I smiled as the latest whoosh seemed to pack a little chill. “Blizzard, really?” I thought. “Wouldn’t that be fun?” And so I dug holes and planted shrubs until my bruised ribs stabbed hard enough to make breathing painful.
The forecast blizzard was still hours away when I took tools for unclogging drains over to Jake’s house, but the temperature had fallen to 42 on its way to 25. Weather people continued to insist the snow and blowing snow would arrive sometime after midnight, and we went to bed wondering if that was really thunder we were hearing off in the distance.
We awakened Monday to telephone alerts from the university saying the campus would remain closed all day; there would be no classes on the 25th. A quick look out the front of the house revealed a blanked of snow thick enough to cover everything in sight. All schools were closed. Early morning Seminary was cancelled. Then right on schedule at 6 o’clock, the next wave of snow and wind arrived.
What a glorious setting for singing praises to the Lord of all creation!