Admiring the Wind from Above

Like mailmen, neither snow nor rain nor heat usually keep me from my daily walk, but today's 20+ mile-per-hour wind was seriously discouraging, to say the least. I kept putting it off and finally mid-afternoon realized that if I didn't go soon, I wasn't going.

So I went, but walked east instead of my usual west. As I was waiting at the corner of Seventh and Marshall, a guy looked at me and nodded. Not entirely sure what he meant, I said, "This wind couldn't be much worse!"

Pulling aside his scarf, he grinned and pointed to nearby City Hall. "Sure it could," he said. ""Bet it's a whole lot worse up there."

So don't you just know I had to march myself up there to find out? I took the elevator to the Observation Deck, along with a couple of city employees who must have wanted to escape their offices pretty badly because they didn't have coats on.

And it was incredibly cold and windy up there and I'm saying that as someone who was dressed for the weather. But it was beautiful, too; every rooftop flag was at full attention, plumes of smoke made horizontal white lines across the sky and the river looked one step removed from a sheet of ice.

The gift of it was that when I got back down to the street, the wind felt as gentle as a summer breeze in comparison. And as the handsome Martin taught me a few years back, perception is reality.

It was a lovely walk home. I don't know why it took me so long to get going in the first place.