At the Vestal Place I listened,
trying to put on the ears of its homesteaders. I wasn’t expecting to understand
the experience of constant labor or satisfaction of building something. I was
just trying to ascertain the quality and sounds of solitude. Near the homestead
buildings, the wind wrenched at roof tin, garnering angry cracks and squeals.
These are not the sounds of living here, but of the elements reclaiming.
Further out in the field sitting under a pine tree on a sandstone boulder, I
listened again. The wind is different when nothing but trees resist against it.
I worked language over, trying to find words that could encompass those sounds.
My body understands the hollow reediness of it, the empty force, but no words
exactly describe it. Even its emotional effect is hard to restrain with
language. Wind has been described as lonely and it is, but what is the quality
that makes it so? From my perch, I appreciated its melancholy, but to live
within the wind’s hold year around in isolation, it could be a sound of
distress.