April 17th, 2022
The words began coming to me in the early morning as I lay in the arms of my lover and partner Rayna. My heart was coming alive, whispering - imploring me to write. Lying in bed awake, my mind’s eye was envisioning the bluebird sky from the morning prior, the turbulent wind raking her fingers across St. John’s, Newfoundland. The trees bristled despite her relentless push and pull - the firs and pines I could see were refusing to be uprooted today. Looking up I remember spotting seagulls and crows soaring, wheeling and banking high above me - buffeted by the constant bombardment of the driving snow.
Rayna has a canvas print on the wall of her kitchen with the words “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning how to dance in the rain”. I think one can reasonably add wind to the that list of things to dance in, and the birds sure were doing just that hundreds of feet overhead. Tucking their wings in like fighter jets and nosediving precipitously here, banking, circling, and rising there - this was most definitely an aerial dance of the avian variety. And to think that some of us humans doubt the sentience of animals.
Thinking of those playful creatures above and the bending branches below I found in that memory some of my initial wonder for this place of near perpetual wind - Newfoundland.
The turbulence.
That is what continues to strike me about the wind here, and everywhere in Newfoundland for that matter. I recently took a Myers Briggs personality test and reconfirmed my INFJ status (read: rarest type, often misunderstood) but was floored by the letter that came after, something I’d never seen on any prior personality type test I’d ever taken before.
T. For Turbulent.
Woah.
I’ve long known turbulence in my life - it’s been an ever present fixture really. The turbulence in the space between my head and my heart you’d have to experience to believe. Rapper P.O.S has a lyric in his song “All of It” that goes “I am in a lane that will give you vertigo.” I can relate - and the invisible and ever turbulent cloud street in the sky of my mind gives me vertigo often. I’ve been resisting this turbulence for years, like capturing a lightning bug inside a bottle - I don’t want the container of my resistance to snuff this heart’s light out. I can’t explain it fully but I’ll offer a plea and take my own spin on an old bumper sticker I once saw: “<del>Jesus</del> Heart take the wheel”.
At the time of this writing I am not sure where the ship of my life is headed. I feel I am still actively charting that course, with my mental sextants, maps and headings. I plot, steer, adjust, scan the horizon, and set a new waypoint in the water beyond my bow. What I can say confidently is that my Head has not gotten me where I’ve wanted to go thus far. Straddling the latitudinal lines that girdle the Earth, I’ve been taking a linear, undisrupted path in my life. Sailing from East to West I’ve tried in waking life to not disturb others, to follow some semblance of a path of least resistance. As I lay beside her, she’s still sleeping but I can almost hear Rayna asking me “And how’s that working out for you?”
Perspective I tell you - that question will gift you with load of it. And she’s right to ask me. It hasn’t been working out for me - I’ve only longed to break from this thin and narrow line and I know exactly in which directly I want to veer.
NORTH
I long to cut the wheel hard, rudder rotating, sails catching and my boom arcing swiftly across my stern. I long to find my true North.
A woman once asked me, years ago, pointing to my ex-fiancé at the time with a bejeweled ring finger, and speaking in a thick Rhode Island accent: “ What are your intentions towards her?”
This is a question I want to answer about WindDriven. What are my intentions for this space? Or as Traver Boehm would ask “What are you building?”
A living, breathing and interactive journey of human connections with wind throughout history. That I invite you to join.
I intend to use a variety of media tools (many yet to be built) to tell this story and chart my course. Wind is well known for overwhelming microphones and I intend to include a podcast format here, so while I will never apologize for the wind in the audio I am determined to figure out how to capture all of those incredible sounds without destroying listening eardrums. Video and photography will be needed to capture how the wind has and continues to shape our world and us, the people in its path. Music will be employed as well as I’m fond of the wind instruments, especially bag pipes. I intend to be a student of the wind and of those who’ve been lucky to study, work and play in it. I hope to be more Mike Rowe than Bill Nye the Science guy on this journey and I look forward to your company as we travel and learn together on this windy path.
It’s time. My turbulent mind, “the Great connector” of my life, will chart the course and my Heart will finally take his rightful place at the wheel.
I invite you to join me on this turbulent, eccentric, bizarre, and thrilling journey. This story is as much about humans as it is about wind and those drawn to the tempests of the world are a delightfully odd group. Perhaps you work in or play in the wind, or perhaps you’re a tourist - longing for a trip to enliven your life.
Regardless of your background, Welcome to WindDriven.
