The Wind Whistle

And my relationship with the element of Air

Mayan Wind Whistle

I bought this Mayan wind whistle many years ago. I’d never heard of them, but it didn’t surprise me that they exist. Or that I was drawn to buy one.

I’ve had an uneasy relationship with the wind for as long as I can remember.

In shamanic practices, the wind whistle has been used for many purposes, one important one being a connection to the elements, especially the element of air.

The whistle sounds eerily like the wind. (Listen to audio to hear.)

When I was very young, a storm blew in while my family was picnicking on a lake. My father took me by the hand, and I was airborne as we ran to the car, rain pelting down and trees swaying. It’s one of just a handful of my early childhood memories. I was terrified.

Another childhood memory was looking out our side door with my mother and seeing a funnel cloud pass over our heads. We lived in Detroit. One of my sisters was on a neighbor’s boat in Lake St. Clair, and I remember worrying about her. I was terrified of the water, too.

As an adult, I huddled with my own family in the basement while a tornado touched down in our neighborhood. Just moments before, I’d been standing on the back porch, mesmerized by the pea-soup-green sky and stillness in the air around me. It was hot and sticky, but the temperature plummeted in what seemed like seconds, and the wind began to blow.

It’s true what they say about tornadoes sounding like freight trains. The sound is momentary, and then the stillness and devastation return.

I’ve had tornado nightmares my entire life. (Thank you, Wizard of Oz.)

I did a painting many years ago about this fear. I think it was titled “Turbulence.”

Needless to say, flying has never been my favorite thing.

Just that word “turbulence” used to launch me into fear. It’s that air element again.

I meant to write this post during Vata Season because air is one of the dominant elements of Vata dosha.

But I never finished it and it’s been lingering in my Dashboard for months. Then, last Sunday, a tornado watch alert appeared on my phone, and so I decided to resurrect it.

I grew up in the Midwest. This should be a piece of cake. Instead, I felt tornado PTSD fear rise and settle in the pit of my stomach.

The literal calm before the storm.

All of my senses were on high alert as I noticed the light darkening inside the house. Outside, I felt that stillness.

A lone Crow was insistently cawing, but all the other birds seemed silent. “Where are they?” I wondered. “Are they sheltered, safe somewhere?”

I did what works best for me now in times like that—I went upstairs and meditated, taking my wind whistle with me. I blew into it over and over in an attempt to calm my own breath and hopefully calm the weather outside.

In the end, nothing much happened. When the weather app on my phone declared that the watch was over, I went outside. The light was exquisite. This photo doesn’t do it justice, but I stood there for the longest time, drinking it in.

People like me always like to say, “We ARE Nature.” I think that the more connected we become to Nature “out there,” the more we realize what that statement really means.

Reflecting on the elements is an easy place to start. I find myself thinking about them often, especially when I’m out walking in the woods.

A gentle breeze vs. a tornado.

A soft rain vs. a thunderstorm.

The fire of the sun can warm us or scorch us.

We can walk gently on the earth, or an avalanche or earthquake can bury us.

We are the elements - or should I say that the elements are a part of us. Just like Nature outside of us — the trees, birds, rivers, mountains, wind, and fire — we experience imbalances and excesses.

I don’t know about you, but I feel all of these things.

Some days, I feel calm, centered, and grounded—like the earth.

On other days, my mind races a mile a minute, spinning like a tornado —the air element unbalanced.

Air is the breath of life.

The fire element is at play if I’m running a fever or feeling hot-tempered.

We literally have a digestive fire.

And, well, we all know how vital water is to our bodies.

So, by recognizing how connected we are to the elements and our precious planet, perhaps we can send more love and respect her way.

I read somewhere that the Druids believed that the origin of the word “god/God” was the sound of the wind through the trees (particularly the Oak tree, which they revered.) I do not remember the source of this, so I can’t confirm or deny it, but it certainly would be an ode to the wonder of the air element via the wind.

Psithurism: the sound of wind whispering through the trees

Many years ago, when I was struggling to heal from chronic pain, I had a host of other weird symptoms. The strangest one was my reaction to any strong air movement. Even during the heat of the summer - the wind hitting me while riding my bike, a fan, or an air conditioner - could unhinge me. 

One beautiful summer day while living in NYC, I was helping my partner out at his restaurant and filling in as a hostess. Standing by the open doors to the patio and under a ceiling fan, I felt my entire nervous system on high alert as I fought to hold back tears.

A sweet, observant server named Sarah approached and put her arms around me. She must have been in her early twenties. Sarah asked me if I had ever heard of Ayurveda. I said, “No,” but I felt this deep knowing in my body that I did know it—I’d just forgotten.

She had grown up in California with hippie parents, as she described them. They had taught her about Ayurveda.

I still had one foot in allopathic medicine at the time, and when I would mention this symptom to any doctor, they looked at me like I was crazy. Sometimes, they would suggest antidepressants!

That tiny seed that Sarah planted eventually led me to my first Ayurvedic practitioner. When I sheepishly mentioned the wind issue, he looked at me and said, “Of course, you feel that way. Your Vata is off-the-charts deranged. It’s as if too much wind is trapped in your body.” Ayurveda likes to use the word deranged. Really, it just means an excess/imbalance in that dosha.

Vata derangement - too much wind/air and ether/space can equal pain.

I remember feeling so understood that day, and over the following months and years, I slowly made my way back into balance with the help of Ayurveda, the knowledge of life.

When I moved to New Hampshire in 2020, considering my history with the wind, I found it a bit ironic that I landed in the foothills of Mount Washington - the highest peak in the Northeast.

For years, Mt. Washington, located in the state of New Hampshire here in the U.S., has been described as the windiest place on Earth, thanks to a 75 year old record for the highest wind speed ever recorded. The mark was set back in 1934, when gusts reached a speed of 231 miles per hour on the summit of the 6,288 foot peak, which is legendary for it’s incredibly bad weather.

—The Adventure Log

In February of 2023:

New Hampshire’s Mount Washington, the highest peak in the Northeast, recorded the coldest wind chill in the history of the United States on Saturday morning when an arctic air mass hit New England.

The previous wind chill record was shattered overnight, when wind chills dropped to -108.4 degrees at different points on Friday night and Saturday morning.

The Hill

I have not made my way up there yet, but a friend of mine just returned from hiking it!

My interest in AKA obsession with “Little House on the Prairie.” is not yet complete, and serendipitously, a few more gems came my way as I was crafting this post.

After reading “Prairie Fires” by Caroline Fraser, I was led to the documentary “The Dust Bowl” by Ken Burns. I am still working my way through it, and I’m not gonna lie—that part of our history is unthinkable.

There’s wind. And then there’s DUST + WIND. This was one of the worst ecological disasters in the world, and I’m ashamed to admit that I knew a bit about it but not nearly enough to recognize its scope.

If ever there was an example of how man's actions (although unwittingly) led to an epically monstrous imbalance, this was it.

These two quotes are such beautiful descriptions of the wind that it’s hard to fathom what lay ahead for the settlers who headed west.

“You live with the wind when you're out there. It's not something that's constant, but it blows more than it doesn't blow. The times that it blows really hard may not be that often. But there’s just a constant breeze, a little murmur of the wind across the fields and in the wheat and in what trees are there. You feel it, you sense it more than you hear it.”

Charles Shaw, Cimarron County, OK

And

“It sounded different, as well. Always the sounds of the wind had come from above, rustling the leaves and tossing the evergreens. Here it whispered beneath her, so that its voice seemed to rise up from the ground. She could hear great sweeps of it passing across the prairie, lifting and falling like living breath. Here the very shape of the wind was visible. The tall swaying grass made it so, and by looking closely Carolyn saw that the wind was not composed of one single movement—it fanned with hundreds of fingers through the tall blades all at once, stroking ruffled, swirling patterns all over the prairie.”

“Caroline: Little House, Revisited” - Sarah Miller

I thought about this passage the past few days when we’ve had on-and-off gifts from the wind of gentle breezes, relieving the heat and blowing the bugs away.

Who doesn’t love the wind when she’s a breeze?

Our breath is of the same air element.

This song by one of my favorite singer-songwriters, Lucinda Williams, serendipitously came on Spotify while my post was a work in progress. How perfect is that? It’s a poignant ode to the elements.

I’ll leave you with Lucinda singing instead of me reading the lyrics.

Much Love,
Barbara

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I Envy the Wind

I envy the wind
That whispers in your ear
That howls through the winter
That freezes your fingers
That moves through your hair
And cracks your lips
That chills you to the bone
I envy the wind

I envy the rain
That falls on your face
That wets your eyelashes
And dampens your skin
And touches your tongue
And soaks through your shirt
And drips down your back
I envy the rain

I envy the sun
That brightens your summer
That warms your body
And holds you in her heat
That makes your days longer
And makes you hot
And makes you sweat
I envy the sun

I envy the wind
I envy the rain
I envy the sun
I envy the wind

— Lucinda Williams