The Transition Artist

Today I woke up to the sound of doves hooting outside my window. The only other sound is the swirling of air, a slow syncopated rhythm as it passes in and out of the lungs of the beautiful man who sleeps beside me. Sometimes I hear a rooster crowing in the chicken coop. Every now and then, though, I hear the wind, whistling through the pipes and tapping on the windows, wishing it could find its way inside.

The winds are stronger here. I’ve never experienced anything quite like them. They blow up off the Atlantic Ocean, picking up speed as they wash over a beach I’ve never seen.

The wind here is uniquely different from the winds I know back home.

I know the winds of London and Paris that brush rain sideways, flip umbrellas inside out, and blow pieces of hair out of place. I know the gentle breezes of the Texas summer that offer fleeting relief from intense heat and humidity. I know the brick wall of air that is a hurricane, hitting land an hour from the coast and ripping fences, boarded over windows, and trees from their seats, whisking them away to leave trails of chaos in its wake.

The wind here is not the same as those winds.

It comes from the sea and grabs handfuls of the fresh air on its way over the ocean so it can bring them here to me on land. In the 5.8 kilometers of land it must cross to make its way to me, it meets no barriers and only gains momentum. It flies across farm fields and arrives here to me smelling of grains, dew, and a hint of salt.

Though the wind knows no barriers, I do.

I live in a time of waiting inside, of checking the time to be sure I haven’t been gone longer than an hour, and of peeking at the distance on my running watch to make sure I’m not much further than a kilometer away from home, afraid of getting stopped by police I’ve only seen here once.

The strange thing about this wind is that it blows hard, but the sun still shines. Clouds come and go, but the sun always seems to creep back out. The wind flies about, digging its fingers into anything it touches, and the sky remains clear as a bell and calm. The wind looks cold, but the sun looks warm and inviting, like it‘s having a good time anyway. As I watch from my window, I feel a small tug to believe the sun instead of the wind.

The first morning I heard the winds, I had planned on going for a long tempo run. I laced up my running shoes, filled out an attestation form for “short displacement for physical activity, within 1km of my house, for no more than an hour,” and put my hat on only to look out at the wind. Yikes. I stood hesitating by the door for a good 15 minutes. A gray cloud passed and, sure it would rain, I unrolled my workout mat, preparing to bring my workout inside. As I started fiddling with my workout app, a sudden burst of sunshine flooded the house. I walked back to the window and peered up at the sky, dotted with blowing leaves, again. I’ve run in worse, I finally decided, remembering a particularly painful (and somewhat comical) 15-mile run earlier this year filled with rain, gusting winds, hail, and short bouts of sunshine.

I scribbled the date and time stamp on my paper, popped it in my running belt along with my ID, and off I went.

Slap.

I stepped out the door and the wind gave me a smack in the face and a shove. I steeled myself, convinced that as long as I wasn’t running against it, it wouldn’t bother me. I walked through the back gate and pulled it shut behind me.

Before the banks of the river and all other foot paths meant for walking or running were closed, I ran like the wind down to the Orne River, an estuary that runs alongside the Normand farm towns until it becomes the Atlantic. The river has perfect running trails, carved out of sand and dirt and lined with a bit of green and tree bark so they’re never too soggy even after rain falls.

On that particular day, the wind seemed to propel me as I ran downhill through the farms that led to the river path. When I got to the bottom, I turned right to head towards the sea; each week I inched a little closer.

The beaches have been closed since I got here. They drew too many people in the unseasonably warm March weather when confinement went into effect and are now policed by the gendarmerie and shown on the news as the best place to get a ticket for being too far from home during confinement. Though I’ve lived 5.8 kilometers away from the beach for almost 2 months now, I’ve never set foot on the sand or laid eyes on the waves.

As I ran down the trail towards the dunes where the estuary starts breaking into a series of little creeks before it hits the ocean, I faced down the wind. The gusts were so strong it felt like running in slow motion on a treadmill, as if every time my feet left the ground, the wind pushed me back and resisted my forward motion, holding me in place. I ran at a 8 minute per mile pace, but felt like I might as well have been walking. The wind suspended my concept of time and distance, until suddenly my watch chimed to remind me I had run against it for two miles.

The thing about the wind is that it seems to deter most other runners here. While I normally don’t pass more than one or two other people out on my runs anyway, it gets especially quiet when the winds are blowing. On a normal sunny Saturday on the riverbanks, I might pass a handful of other people who have the same idea, but this particular Saturday there were none. I was alone with the wind, able to appreciate the little waves it created on the surface of the river. One wave in particular, a little higher, quicker and lighter than the others, caught my eye.

I stared and realized it wasn’t a wave at all but a seal, ducking in and out of the water and then laying back with its head propped up just above the surface, lounging in the sunshine. I stopped dead in my tracks and laughed as I watched it tip it’s snout skyward. The little creature was completely focused on the sun, just like me, but, unlike me, seemed oblivious to the very thing that created the waves lapping around it’s face, the same thing that made me feel like I was running in slow motion, gasping for breath as I ran against it. The seal was oblivious to the invisible force that kept everybody else at home. That seal has probably never felt so free, I thought. I was the only soul around for miles. Everybody else seemed to be home in confinement, hiding from the strong winds and, worse still, the risk of contagion.

I’ve come to love the wind for moments like these. The wind out here doesn’t indicate bad weather, just more work. A light jog against the wind feels more like an interval run, relenting only when I have the wind to my back, but that doesn’t scare me. I‘ve known harder runs. A run in the wind means ducking my head, protecting my eyes from flying grit with the visor on my hat so I can only peer out from either side of it, but I know the landscape so well that I don’t miss much.

I have retraced the same running paths through the fields so many times, ran the same routes in a kilometer radius, that I know when I’ll hit the line between the canola and wheat fields. As I run by myself in the wind, I peek side to side check the height of the canola flowers and the progress of the wheat bloom, now around knee height where it was barely a green stem in the soil a month ago. I get the special privilege of having the full attention of the sun. I am the lone figure running in the wind, and the sun shines down on my arms and legs, reinforcing the tan lines of my watch and shorts.

In a time of lots of barriers, the wind is one I refuse to accept. It holds me back but makes everything feel more special.

When the government lifts its ban on going out in one short week, there will still be many barriers to navigate. The sun may be shining, but the world may look just as uninviting to some as a windy Saturday may look to a runner. We may continue to hunker down, stay at home, and wait.

Just as I’m learning to face down the wind, we’ll learn to live with our barriers. Each time I step outside into a challenging run with the wind, I feel a little stronger. I am reminded that my effort and tenacity are rewarded with warm sunshine, space to myself, and a touch of resilience I can tap into when I need it. The wind reminds me that, even in the face of challenge, we can choose to tilt our faces to the sun, duck our heads against the grit, and see beauty from the corners of our eyes.