Wild Wind

The nine-alarm fire yesterday on Beacon Street: terrible loss of life, health, home. It started in the basement and chimneyed upward at great rate. The deputy fire chief remarked he'd never in 30 years seen a fire grow so fast. The reason was the wind, almost hurricane force, which whipped the city all day. A broken window and the wind barged through like beserk besiegers through a gap in a city wall. Flames became explosions. 


This wind was an equinoctial wind but specially cold, intense, variable, a new kind of wind, perhaps, for us to learn about and build relationship with, a wind more like a tiger than some domesticated beast, a wind with more surprises in store. 

Yesterday's wind may be just one item in the repertoire of a new and rapidly evolving climate regimen along with, who knows, unprecedented floods, extended droughts, huge storms, extreme cold, or heat, and who knows what else.  

If the Beacon Street fire was the face of the wild wind, the wind itself may be the expression of the new climate jurisdiction we've found ourselves willy-nilly subject to. Our negotiations with the air are set to become more complex and fraught.

What we are making with our multiple impalpable contributions has made itself manifest; and we are being forced to respectfully acknowledge its power, though it may be by now beyond pity.