Doorway To Magic

The wind began to blow last night. If it is hard enough that you can hear it pushing against the outside walls, maybe it is trying to get closer to the wood stove. I leaned my head back against the couch and watched the trees swaying in the blue shadow of moonlight. The wind was ushering in a polar vortex.

Snow squalls dashed across the road ahead of our truck, nature’s game of chicken. They seem to gather themselves then push forward only to get across the road, then rear back and tornado down the field. This kind of cold is late this year. I see the climate changing, but I take solace in the familiar.

We pay attention to the weather, we need to know the best days to move animals and whether or not to water our gardens. We ask Alexa several times a day for the daily forecast and check online for the up- to-the-literal-minute predictions. From the back room Paul announces that it will begin snowing at 6:22 this evening. I find myself standing in the window, at 6:20, watching the sky for the first flake to drop, and I am pleased when it doesn’t happen as it can be slightly disconcerting when it does.

Our navigation systems promise no-fail directions only to send us down impassable, class four roads and an hour long argument about who was supposed to be in charge of navigating.

We can see our daily bank transactions and make new ones from the comfort of our desk chairs. People pay their bills, write their blogs, buy and ship holidays gifts, all with the push of a button, and we do it all with complete electronic confidence.

I teach lessons virtually and feel justified in frustration when the Internet is wonky. I want to push a button, see a face in Fairbanks, hear a note played.

Living where we live, we lose power. A lot. When the wind blows, the power goes. One year an ice storm left us without electricity for five days. I think my aggravation had more to do with the idea that the power company was unable to let us know exactly how long the power would be out rather than the power actually being out.

The more we know, the more we have, the more we want.

We shouldn’t know everything. Like cloning, it gives us a false sense of our own importance. When we are told there will be torrential downpours all afternoon and, windshield wipers at the ready, I watch the sun crack the afternoon sky, I fist pump.

If, despite all of our technological wizardry we still can’t know or predict everything, maybe it means that there can be hope for believing in the unseeable, the unknowable; for magic, Santa Claus, no-see -ums and love.