Do not let your guard down

It is a strange biological condition that air is the most crucial element for sustaining life, but wind — a form of air — is an agent of nature whose primary purpose is to wreak havoc and, if at all possible, to kill us.

Wind is, of course, just air in motion, but it is the moment that air gains movement which changes everything, like feeding a gremlin after midnight.

At 30 below zero my insulated outer layers and my hood pulled snug around my face hold my body heat around me in a warm cocoon. But during a wind chill of minus 30 leaches your body heat out through all the layers.

My winter coat, with its outer cotton layer over the zip-in liner of dense wind-resistant-something-or-other that is, itself, lined with a tight-woven and plush polar fleece, yields to the wind, pushing against bib-overalls made of industrial strength canvas over a half-inch of poly-fill insulation and a sateen liner. This layer, in turn, is pressed against a heavy cotton, button-up shirt, layered over a cotton undershirt cannot stop the wind.

All these materials pressed hard together by the wind conduct the cold straight to the outer dermal layer, thus cooling the temperature of the only heater in those clothes, my body.

Under all those layers, my skin feels the wind like a frigid sigh is cooling the air inside the once-warm cocoon and exhaling my body heat out the leeward side.

It darts inside any gaps it blows open, all the better to bite me.

My arms and legs, protected by only one insulated layer gradually stiffen with cold and the skin turns angry red from the insult.

My face, though, I hunker as much as possible down into my upturned collar, but the rest, left exposed to the wind that strips it of all moisture and heat down to the subcutaneous layers, feels like the blood has frozen into pins and needles. Where my warm breath meets cold wind, frost and ice build on my skin and stray strands of hair tangling in the wind.

When my head is facing right wrong — while I’m doing the outside work that needs doing — the wind creates a vortex of air around my nose and mouth. I know oxygen is coming in, but wind is trying to pull it out of me with each breath.

My Great-grandma Emily, raised on German wives tales, refused to own a cat, saying that they will sit on your chest and breathe in your face, thus stealing your breath. “They will kill babies that way,” she’d say, looking me straight in the eyes so I could see the truth in hers.

I wonder what she would think of this high plains desert wind, big as the whole outdoors, hammering and yanking at you like a street thug while it tries to rob the air from out of your nostrils.

Strong enough to erode rock and persistent enough to shape trees it applies itself equally to anything man made — pulling down wires, pushing over posts and poles, beating against the house, sandblasting the siding, working away at the roofing one hint of a smidgen at a time loosening screws or nails until one day a gale can set things to flapping proper.

Yes, it has blown in warm temperatures this week, and this summer will most likely have days where it blows in a much-needed rain to cool us down and feed the flora.

But under other circumstances this week’s comforting rise in temperature is the same one that takes us from a gentle 70-degree summer day to a 108-degree scorcher searing everything alive.

And that refreshing rainstorm is just as easily the bringer of hail, like a white combine driven by a road-rager, mowing down everything in its path and crashing through your windows — or it’s next week’s blizzard burying us in snow.

It’s OK with that, too.

The wind cares naught whether it is lifting the sail or shredding it and driving the ship to ground or whether it’s fanning the flames of a campfire or force feeding the flames of a forest fire.

Nor does it care about your plans, your endurance, your current circumstances, your need for sleep, what you want to keep pretty or whether or not you forgot your garbage can by the curb.

I’m pretty sure it actively tries to push your car off the road.

Wind is the sociopath of Mother Nature’s elements.

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I’ve thought about this a lot over the years and you can’t change my mind on this one at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .