The Wind

I’ve always trusted the wind to carry me where I need to go. I’ve trusted it ever since that day in the park when I was just a young boy, where there sat three older boys. Men, even. The wind wasn’t there when I decided, instead of moving as quickly past the park as I could like my gut told me to, to walk into the park to show that I wasn’t afraid of them. I’d been faced with worse in my life up until then. I could handle it. I wouldn’t back down.

I sat on the swing, saw the way the three of them looked at me. I was alone, and my demeanor often invited violence or worse. Still, that voice in my gut screamed – though the three of them had done nothing but look at me and speak softly among themselves. Having proved myself in the face of anticipated danger, I rose from the swing and walked calmly through the sand and sparse grass to the park entrance. I was shaking, and I did not know why. It happened fast. I had just rounded the corner, and as I did so, I noticed the three young men getting up from their perch and following me.

“Hey, where do you think you’re going?” I heard one of them say.

I swallowed. My heart pounded. I froze. The wind kicked up around my ears. I heard bells ringing all around me. The wind seemed to grab hold of the backs of my arms and the backs of my legs and push me. I fought against it at first, startled, and despite my efforts I still moved ahead a few feet. The wind stopped momentarily and I heard footsteps falling hard behind me. With that, the wind kicked in again and this time I trusted in it, believing myself in danger. It carried me down the street, and I worked with it, using my little legs to pump down the asphalt, cutting through semi-mowed lawns. It was a hard run, and they pursued me for unknown reasons – shouting at me to stop and then telling me that I better run at the same time. I took refuge under an old trestle and ate berries until the inside of my mouth turned purple and the sky turned almost an equal shade of color.

So, on a night recently before winter, when I heard the wind calling, as it often does – I went outside.

The bricks were slick with rain and fallen branches and leaves the color of fire. I walked silently under buzzing street lights. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I followed my feet, which brought me to an old stone church, the shadow of its tower extending into the night. I moved up its stone steps and sat underneath the arch of a doorway. A sign on the door read SANCTUARY – and I treated it as such. I sat there for a long time, reflecting. A white flag with a red cross whipped like thunder and every once in a while I would see a car move cautiously down the street – but no people.

Eventually, I moved on from there and walked past old buildings. The old fire station. The McLellan Mansion. The Longfellow House. Trees, animated by the wind, made shadow puppets on the walls of these old lived-in-spaces. I looked for wraiths in windows and found none, but I soon became a wraith in my own right, looking in at people from the outside. I passed a diner – closed – but a lone woman diligently wiped the counter and made eye contact with me through the glass. I moved on, her eyes following me, curious, down the street until I passed a bar – closed – where a young man wiped glasses with a cloth and hung them upside down over the bar. He felt my eyes on him as I passed, and he must have just gotten a glimpse of my dark form flit by the window.

I followed a path of leaves, swirling in circles. It brought me down Congress Street, down through the Old Port – to the water. The waves surged and beat against the docks. I was soaked from the rain. A man asked me for change, and I had none to give. I met a friend unexpectedly and said hello and good luck. I had a conversation with a woman about my buttons and about marijuana. A man shouted from his car something about my wallet. These are the encounters a wraith will often have here in Portland.

Eventually I made my way back home. On my way back, I thought about why I did what I did, why I let the wind try to speak to me. Why I walked alone through the streets of Portland at such an hour. Part of it is reflection – walking through the empty streets as pure energy is moving things, doing things all around you – nothing can compare to that sense of rejuvenation, of non-stagnation. Part of it is isolation – nobody is on the streets in such weather, except for people like me. I took in the city in a new way, finding secrets previously hidden from my eyes in plain sight. Part of it is hope – hope that something amazing will happen. Part of it is, going back to reflection, also looking for answers to things I’ve been asking myself.

The downside to this is that I don’t always know what questions I’m asking myself, and the wind also doesn’t always answer.

The Midnight Hike

It was fall and I was much younger, then.

I was living with my grandparents in Casco, Maine at the time and my brother Gary was visiting from Lewiston and staying the night. We were both having some troubles in our lives and we kept coming back to them via conversation. We talked about life, about women troubles, about things we liked to do. Brother stuff. Bonding stuff.

Late that night, I had an idea. It was close to midnight but I felt like we both needed some adventure in our troubled, mundane existences. I could tell he was feeling down, and I felt like I couldn’t do much to help. We both were living in different cities and weren’t able to hang out as much as we used to before then.

“Hey, Gary,” I said with a mischievous smile moving across my face. “Are you tired?”

He said he sort of was, but he wasn’t sure.

“Want to go for a walk?”

He looked at me like I was an idiot. “It’s dark out and it’s cold. I don’t want to get pneumonia.”

I laughed. “You won’t get pneumonia, Gary.”

I told him to wait there and I went and found the darkest clothing possible for each of us to wear. I started speaking in hushed tones. “We’re going to go climb Rattlesnake Mountain. Here, take this.”

As Gary threw on the black hooded sweatshirt, I handed him my Chinese dagger (or maybe saber) with the stainless steel blade and engraved scabbard. It had the inscription DONGFANG on the hilt, so that is what I named it. He took it out of the scabbard and the metal gleamed in the light from the kitchen in my grandparent’s trailer. He asked me what it was for.

“We’re going to be like adventurers. It’ll be fun.” I strapped on another blade with a leather sheath, dragons and small jewels decorating the pommel and hilt, attaching it to my belt loop and then throwing on a dark hat and sweater.

We were both becoming excited and we finally strode out into the moonlit night, walking down route 85 as lightning bugs flared and crickets chirped in a massive chorus. The field was on our right, covered in tall grass, and it looked like stars because of all those fireflies lighting the way. There was a light breeze rolling through every once in a while and the trees were rustling in a gentle chorus.

We moved as stealthily as we could, diving into the grass as a car would roll by, creating scenarios in our heads involving secret missions to a far-off land or things like we’d read about or watched in movies or on television.

Finally, we came to the base of Rattlesnake Mountain. The forest at the base was ink-black, and we could see the summit poking out into the clouds.

“You ready?” I whispered.

“Yeah,” he whispered back.

We entered the forest and couldn’t see for the longest time. Gary tried to use a flashlight but I made him put it away. “Our eyes will adjust, give it time. We don’t want anyone to see us in here.”

After a while, our eyes did adjust but we could still only make out spots where the moonlight from the full moon came bursting through the canopy and onto the forest floor. The moonbeams were ethereal and added to the fantasy theme of the night’s events.

We climbed, we said little. We heard noises and kept moving, staying focused on the prize at the top. We didn’t get lost, but we had to stop several times to make sure we were where we thought we were. Then, we emerged at the top where the treeline breaks and the side of the mountain opens up into sky. The stars and the wind greeted us and the moon stood in our faces, so close I felt like we could reach up and touch it.

The two of us stood there, bathed in the light of the moon, fantasy weapons strapped to our waists and a sense of adventure and whimsy swimming through our heads. We didn’t speak for a long time, but when we did, we sat down and we let everything out, letting the moon in on our woes, a distant but very wise and comforting friend.

We laughed, we cried. It was a spiritual experience up there on top of the mountain. When we finally started to get cold, we had to leave, but it was a good couple of hours. To this day, I still look back at that night and I think we both figured things out about ourselves and each other. We didn’t slay any dragons, we didn’t find any gold…but the magic was real and I certainly won’t forget it.