Gone with the Wind
I realize this topic has nothing to do with Julia, parenthood, nor anything particular to Christopher's blog, but someone has to give public voice to this burning question, so I'm going to post it anyway.
What is it with Northfield and wind? Is Northfield the windiest city in the U.S.? Or what??!
Listen, I grew up on the northern plains, so I know of which I speak. A newspaper columnist in my hometown once described the wind that whips across the prairie up there as being "like a blowtorch in the summer and a knife in the winter," and the simile was so perfectly apt that I have remembered it for twenty-some years. So I'm not easily impressed by wind. But Lordy, there have been more days (and nights) of window-rattling, tree-branch-whipping wind in the less than 4 months we've lived here than I remember in a good string of years past. It seems like every day Julia and I are fighting the gale-force winds at the new playground (newly nicknamed in our house as the Arctic Playground Where it is Always Twenty Below), hair permanently in our eyes and lips, or chasing her plastic balls across the grass behind our house before they disappear in the field past County Road 28, never to be seen again. Even in my exhausted, pregnant state, there have been several occasions lately where I have actually been unable to sleep because it is TOO NOISY OUTSIDE. Just yesterday our patio umbrella blew into someone else's yard, and two weekends ago we had to bungee-cord the patio chairs to the table to keep them grounded. If you dare open the living room windows, the sound of the vertical blinds clattering maniacally in their stack is enough to scare both the cat AND the baby nearly to death.
Is it like this all the time here? Or just in the winter/spring, i.e., since we've been here? Does anyone else who lives here notice this?! I don't know, but if they do, no one's talking. Northfieldians must be so used to it they don't even think to comment on it.
What is it with Northfield and wind? Is Northfield the windiest city in the U.S.? Or what??!
Listen, I grew up on the northern plains, so I know of which I speak. A newspaper columnist in my hometown once described the wind that whips across the prairie up there as being "like a blowtorch in the summer and a knife in the winter," and the simile was so perfectly apt that I have remembered it for twenty-some years. So I'm not easily impressed by wind. But Lordy, there have been more days (and nights) of window-rattling, tree-branch-whipping wind in the less than 4 months we've lived here than I remember in a good string of years past. It seems like every day Julia and I are fighting the gale-force winds at the new playground (newly nicknamed in our house as the Arctic Playground Where it is Always Twenty Below), hair permanently in our eyes and lips, or chasing her plastic balls across the grass behind our house before they disappear in the field past County Road 28, never to be seen again. Even in my exhausted, pregnant state, there have been several occasions lately where I have actually been unable to sleep because it is TOO NOISY OUTSIDE. Just yesterday our patio umbrella blew into someone else's yard, and two weekends ago we had to bungee-cord the patio chairs to the table to keep them grounded. If you dare open the living room windows, the sound of the vertical blinds clattering maniacally in their stack is enough to scare both the cat AND the baby nearly to death.
Is it like this all the time here? Or just in the winter/spring, i.e., since we've been here? Does anyone else who lives here notice this?! I don't know, but if they do, no one's talking. Northfieldians must be so used to it they don't even think to comment on it.
posted by Shannon at Wednesday, April 19, 2006
1 Comments:
I've been visiting Northfield a few times a year my whole life (my family is buried there) and every time I visit is windier than the last. Granted, the cemetary where I spend most of these visits is on top of a huge hill, but I'll definitely back you up on this one. It's just REALLY WINDY there.
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