I live up here with the vultures.
Every morning, like clockwork, the wind comes up from the lake and cools the air. The wind blows away the poor mosquitoes. It pushes my door open, and comes through the windows. It dries out masking tape and duct tape, pulls out tacks. Papers and photos go flying around. It rattles the windows in their casings on the south wall. The old caulking, scorched by the full sun, is crumbling loose and one of these days the windows are going to fall out. Tools creak on their nails underneath the cabin. Wind blows my clothes off the line. Things go missing. The turbine vent on the roof spins round and round, clattering like a prayer wheel.
Living in the sky has its advantages. I am untouched by flood. Any calamities that could happen below would go unregistered from above. Sometimes the whole valley simply disappears into mist. I feel safe. Except, in a storm. Then, the blowing winds pry at the roof and the cabin shakes on its legs. Trees bow and snap. Thunder and lightening comes down on my head and I think: there is nowhere to run to.
It was 17°C on my first Christmas Eve at the cabin. My mother came to visit, bringing a cooler filled with our favourite Christmas dinner, pickled herring, Swedish meatballs, beet salad. The ice was melting. We were sitting on the porch with friends, in our shirt sleeves and bare feet, enjoying the sun, drinking mugs of mulled wine. Neighbours soon joined us with three goats in tow, and the scene became a comedy of clattering hooves on the floor planks, bleating and snuffling, goats trying to climb onto our chairs, and eat the crackers and cheese, sticking their beards in the dip. We laughed. They reminded me of the Julbock, the Yule goat of Scandinavia, the large straw-woven goat set under the Christmas tree with a red ribbon around.
As darkness fell, we lit the candles and laid out our feast. I am so grateful to my mother for instilling the old traditions in me. Our faces illuminated with soft light, the shadows on the old wooden walls and ceiling, the silence of a house without pipes or wires, all set the atmosphere.
My mother had brought a summer sleeping bag and said she would be fine on the Coleman camp cot. She is my lovely Viking Mother! At 4 am the wind began to gust from the north. I heard my mother shifting on the cot. She must have been cold, but she never complained. I got up to stoke the stove. The wind was battering the walls and the cold came in. The temperature dropped 30 degrees. I laid an extra army sleeping bag over my mother, and we fell back to sleep. That’s how fast the wind can change.
In early June, the silk winds bring the fireflies. Sometimes they find their way into the cabin, and I fall asleep to tiny blinking lights, lighting my way. By day, the south winds warm the lake and bring the dragonflies.
I write well by wind. The thoughts come like the birds. The cloud formations here are the most beautiful I’ve seen anywhere. They come looming over me. I feel like their passing is just a breadth from the top of my head. Wind is my favourite. It has an association with distance and flying. I watch how the birds do it. The vultures find the thermals from the cliffs and are held without having to flap their wings. They fly on a ‘dihedral’. Like a plane, the wings are held at a certain angle from the body to determine the centre of gravity.
I have a bird’s eye view. I can see the lights of three ski hills, the radio towers, the lake, the barn roofs of my neighbours, the road and the tiny moving cars. I see horses grazing two kilometres away. I feel the space inside me. Then one day, the mountain is a nest and everything is blotted out. But I have the rush of wind through leaves. I have one window left, looking east. The sun rises directly in this space between the trees and comes into the cabin and wakes me with the light. I look at those distant hills and feel the pull, like this is all just temporary, and I am meant to move on. You want to stay and you want to go.
