Spirits of Weather and Land

When I was growing up, I was told never to approach an animal that was behaving strangely. A night animal in the day light, a day animal at night. My dad grew up on a farm. One of the few useful things he taught me was that animals acting strange meant they were sick. They'd probably bite you.

This extended to the weather. If the weather started acting strange and you had a bad feeling, get inside. That greenish hue to the sky? Yeah, get inside, that's a tornado. That bad feeling you get from the wind? That's a blizzard.

When Europeans came to the Americas, the "savages" would try to tell the white people what this omen or that omen meant.  They laughed at the Indian's "superstitions" until a few too many of them starved.

The French Trappers caught on pretty quickly, but everyone knew the trappers were half savage to start with. They went native sometimes and learned to read the weather spirits, in the days before the Weather Channel.

When Hurricane Irene was doing her thing in the Caribbean last August, I was in Virginia. I kept looking at Irene's storm track. I just kept having this overwhelming feeling that I had to get home to Vermont.

I have a pretty good relationship with the land I live on. I couldn't help but think that the land was bracing for a big storm, and calling us back.

My husband and I packed up and came home five days before we were supposed to. Good thing too, otherwise we wouldn't have made it back for three weeks.

When I lived in the South, I could never feel comfortable. The land just didn't like me. I always felt like I was intruding. That whole area had always had problems, way back to when whites started settling there. In fact the Caddo Indians never actually live in the particular place where we lived.

Hmmm, wonder if there was a reason for that? If yellow fever, malaria and typhus weren't enough to drive people off, you'd think a perpetually depressed economy would.

There are places that like people better than others. There are places that like particular people more than others. Where I live, it takes about a winter before the place either decides it likes you or not. If not, you can't get out fast enough.

I've never really felt settled for good, in one place, but, where I am now is the closest I've ever felt to it. The land likes me and vice versa. It liked me well enough to call me home for Irene.

It's too easy to think of ourselves as separate from the spirits of places. Urban dwellers especially, however, no one can deny that cities have spirits. Reams and reams of poetry are written about it. It's difficult to tell where the metaphorical begins and the literal ends.

For me, going back to Detroit is like visiting one of my parents when they were ill. Visiting the UK is like visiting a biological relative that I've never lived with. Where I live now is like my chosen family.

This is not metaphorical. This is how I feel. After Irene I was sick, not just from the human cost (which was huge) but the land itself mourned.