Wind
Gusts of Change
Reminders for Humans is a monthly series that explores a natural phenomena, and how I’m applying its wisdom to my own human life. I’m a scientist by training, and a gushy poet by nature. Expect both.
“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade”
-Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Reminders for Humans:
Wind is what happens when air, on the largest of scales, moves from high to low pressure. It is the result of the atmosphere moving from extremes to a middle ground.
On a molecular level, we seek to find equalization instead of extremes. So does the air. So does the water. So do most natural things.
When we feel wind, we are feeling change. No wonder we resist it; no wonder it makes such a mess.
Wind has been on my mind lately. It’s also been on my face. In my eyes. Caught in my hair. Chapping my lips.
I spend a few days a week working on a farm now, making me subject to its blows and howls. Every speck of dust and pollen, every allergen and dirt pile, sent flying. My best friend says wind is her least favorite kind of weather, which I always find funny. I never considered wind as a weather type. But sun and rain and sleet and snow are, so why not wind?
To her credit, the horses seem to hate it, too.
In Colorado, windy season is smack dab in the middle of the change of seasons. When the landscape shifts from being mostly cold to mostly warm in spring, and vice versa in fall. Windy season also overlaps wildfire season – these chunks of time we live through as the days shift from winter to spring, or summer to fall. More wind means a higher likelihood of a wildfire spreading rapidly if it starts; the wind quite literally at its back. It’s hard enough to stop a fire in the desert, let alone when it has force, dry dead litter to eat, and an unlimited supply of air as fuel.
There is this phrase, the winds of change.
Despite the dreadfully vague, esoteric, Victorian novella this metaphor invokes for me, gusts of wind to the face can certainly feel like Earth’s way of smacking you awake to a turbulent new reality, one that looks different from the past. Telling you to snap out of it, to wake up already. It’s visceral imagery, but it’s also quite literal. Wind is, inherently, the physical manifestation of change. It’s “air that has someplace else to be,” as one Reddit comment explains. Which I really enjoy imagining.
Change has been on all of our minds, I imagine, in one way or another. The shifts we witness; frighteningly stark, or slow burning- like a frog in boiling water. Changes within ourselves. Changes in the world around us.
I don’t recall a time I’ve lived through more polarization; in politics, on the internet, amongst strangers, amongst friends.
I don’t recall having less faith in the systems I was taught to rely on, the Right Way of doing anything, the shape and color of my future.
I don’t recall spring ever feeling this transformative. And by transformative, I mean many things. Difficult, trying, challenging, awakening, calm, chaotic, uneasy, assured, confusing. I’ve made decisions that myself a year, or six months ago wouldn’t recognize. I’ve wiped the slate clean again and again.
The palace of a life I’ve built suddenly feels ready to kick me out the front door.
What happens if I want to change? What does that say about my palace?
I ponder it while I muck stalls and weed pastures, while the wind deafens me to anything but my own thoughts.
The Science of Wind
At its core, wind is the macro version of a tiny, essential physical law. You probably learned about in science class. It’s about how molecules in a fluid (which can be liquids or gases) behave in a pressure differential.
In between blasting “Rock ‘n’ Roll (part 2)” by Gary Glitter for pop quizzes, and wearing a white lab coat and safety glasses every day for no good reason, my chemistry teacher used to make us repeat the rhyme along with him: “the flow goes from high to low.“ This little number has yet to escape my memory. (And now I’ve infected yours. You’re welcome.)
Simply put, high-pressure systems don’t seem to want to be high-pressure systems. And as soon as they have the opportunity- the presence of an alternative, lower pressure system within reach, they (and by they, I mean a collection of molecules) will beeline towards the lower pressure. The flow goes from high (pressure) to low (pressure). See?
And why does this happen? Why does matter behave this way? Super good question, love that you asked.
We think, because fluids prefer a middle ground over extremes. At least that’s what Newton thought, in his Second Law of Physics, and the consequential Bernoulli equation. Diffusion works in a similar way: a high concentration of a substance is drawn to a low concentration, which is the basic principle of why your essential oil diffuser makes your entire house smell like patchouli from one little evaporator. Those oil particles want their own space to roam! They’re sick of the pressure of being so crowded in there!
A happy middle, instead of extremes, is a more sustainable option – by which I mean long lasting, reliable, enduring. Nature has a preference for doing what is most intuitive, what is able to be maintained for longest. This is true not just for fluid dynamics, but everything in nature.
This principle is true even if you take two nearly identical high pressure systems and introduce them to one another. Even if one is only 0.5% less pressure than the other, the higher pressure system will flow in its direction, because it’s technically lower. The same is true for two relatively low pressure systems. The fluid will always prefer the lowest pressure available to it.
A Planetary Reconciliation
Now think about this on a planetary scale.
When the seasons change the Earth is tilting on its axis; the sunlight hits new spots on different hemispheres of the planet, warming them from their previously-chilly winter state. Now, in these places, we have pockets of both warm and cold air – low and high pressure systems, respectively.
Wind is the effect of these systems flowing between each other, trying to equalize.
Of course, this is not the only explanation for wind currents. There are roughly five hundred other factors that affect how wind behaves in a particular place, at a particular time. I won’t go into them here, but here’s a resource if you’re curious.
And yet, at its very core, wind is an act of reconciliation. Of harmony. There is much to take away from this.
One might be that it’s in our molecular nature to move away from high-pressure situations when we have access to low-pressure alternatives.
Another, to know that wind – famously symbolizing resistance, difficulty, chaos – is also the experience of change. Currents whip as the air around us is making its way toward a preferred place, a solace. Wind is air that has somewhere better to be.
Another still, that nature itself prefers the middle ground over polarization; equalization over extreme opposites; negative feedback loops to positive ones. That perhaps, the same could be true about people. Perhaps, the gusts of the present mean we are working towards a future more neutral, more equalized.
A girl can dream.
Wind is not a phenomenon created in a vacuum; a flower blooming from underground; a weather system churning out chaos for chaos’ sake. (At least, it’s not only that.)
Wind is change.
When we’re rocked by its gales, struck by its bite, we can remember that we are in the very middle of a holy journey. We are in its way. It can remind us that nature seeks calmer seas, quietude, space. Extremes cannot be tolerated forever, or even for long. Wind is searching, rushing, running toward something better.
And running toward something better is, as most can attest, not without chaos, resistance, discomfort. But that doesn’t make it an unworthy pilgrimage.
After all, this planetary quest for equalization is not only responsible for mega wildfires, storms, destruction. But also for the tailwinds that carry migrating monarchs and songbirds across a continent or two. For clouds floating. Turbines spinning. Sailors brought back home. Chimes rung. Kites flown. Roaring leaves.
For seeds dispersed across the land.
Sources:
Image source: Still from video “Breathe: an 8K storm time lapse video”, by Mike Olbinski
A 14 year old reddit comment on /explainlikeimfive that will probably be stuck in my brain for the rest of eternity: “Wind? Where the hell does it originate from and how does it work?”
More info on how complex wind actually is (very) (but don’t worry it’s for Grades 6 - 12+) : National Geographic Education: Wind.