The wind in Wyoming can be brutal.

To elaborate, last week my post was about a warm, lazy afternoon I spent on my couch reading with the windows open. The day that inspired that brief post was April 3rd. The snow was melted, the sun was shining, kids were playing outside, and dune buggies were rumbling up and down the roads. In contrast, this week, specifically April 12-14, we had 60+ mph winds and snow. Interstate 80 closed and opened up yesterday.

The wind was a constant companion over those three days. There was nowhere I could go in the house where I couldn’t hear it. Living room or kitchen? Large windows, doors in or in close proximity to both rooms. Bedroom? Window. Office? Window. Downstairs hallway? Front door, which opens on a narrow walkway between two rows of buildings that the wind tears through. Downstairs bathroom? Literally next to the front door. Upstairs bathroom? Vent fan, somehow connected to the roof. Upstairs hallway? For reasons I’m not entirely sure of, our water heater seems to be connected to the outside in such a manner that I could hear the wind roaring in the closet it lives in, but thankfully could never feel a draft.

Our sustained wind sounded angry. Like it was raking nails at the siding and shingles. Like it was looking for any unsecured object, be it person, animal, or inanimate, to catch up in its claws and deposit a couple hundred feet further along. I felt for our next-door neighbor, who’s townhouse is on the end of our row. While we just dealt with the roar, I’m certain her house would have actually shaken.

I read Wuthering Heights for the first time as a teenager (thank heaven for the Bronte sisters; I could never stand Jane Austen) and remember vividly the explanation for the name of the titular manor house. For those who may not have read or appreciated the book as much as myself:

Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr. Heathcliff’s dwelling. “Wuthering” being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there at all times, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind, blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun. 

Wyoming is not Yorkshire, but the description of the wind and the vegetation’s response to it still applies. My husband and I ventured into the Wind River mountains a couple weeks back when the weather was brighter and warmer (right after my bear spray incident) and on our way we drove past a house which had clearly planted a whole fence of trees around the entire yard to act as a wind break. All of the trees’ limbs were leaning slightly to the east. I have no way to prove my suspicion that this is due to prevailing winds, but it’s some nice anecdotal evidence.

I tried to take pictures of this storm and its wind. Sometimes, it’s easy to capture nature’s beauty or fury with a lens – sunsets, volcanoes, rainbows, lightning, flowers, floods. Other times, it’s more difficult. Wind is one of those times. Unlike sunsets and volcanoes and rainbows and flowers, wind is invisible to the naked eye. It’s air, made up of billions and billions of molecules too small for the eye to see, but when gathered together in a large enough moving mass is easy to feel. To “see” wind it needs to be moving something, like grass or wheat, or carrying something, like sand…or snow. Even then, “seeing” wind depends on movement. A photo takes a snapshot of a single moment in time and rarely succeeds in conveying how the wind is making the snow billow across the landscape.

Occasionally, if the photographer plans things out or if they just get lucky, movement can be identified in the slant of rain or snow against a darker background. Even then, the viewer may have to look closely to see how streams of white snow are ramping off rocks, or how blurred streaks of white are overlayed on a building. When I tried to take photos of the snow storm with Whalen Butte in the background, they fell within the failure category. They just seem to be depicting a gray day in the Rockies rather than an angry windstorm whipping snow across the landscape but somehow failing to rip the flags off the flagpole across the way.

In contrast, I offer you a photo I took as an undergraduate on a Spring Break field trip. The crowning event of the trip was hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back up in one day. Our professor was…let’s say loveably eccentric? Despite waking up to snow that morning, we started the hike down on the premise that as we got lower we would walk out of the storm. The picture below is from Cedar Ridge on the South Kaibab Trail, maybe a third of the way down. The wind definitely wasn’t 60+ mph, but the blowing snow I caught on camera by pure accident does an excellent job of conveying the situation.

What I want to get across here is that while the second picture is definitely the more impressive of the two (on review, that trip really deserves its own post), the first technically depicts stronger winds. This shows how difficult it is to “take a picture” of wind, and how hard it is to convey the experience of three days of 60+ mph winds in the Rockies to friends and family who’ve never experienced it.

That being said, I didn’t really have a problem with the wind. I live in southwestern Wyoming. Wind is just a part of life here. If you read accounts from homesteaders back in the day they will always mention the wind. It’s like the sound of waves on the coast. I would liken this most recent three-day stint to a surprise visit from a good-natured but slightly annoying relative, maybe a brother-in-law or your spouse’s cousin, that is best enjoyed in small doses. This relative maybe smokes pot but knows better than to actually do it in your house, is a bit of a slob but does make an effort to keep their shit picked up when visiting, is genuinely grateful for any food you put in front of them, and the kids love them. Even with them showing up unannounced you don’t mind having them around, but three days is a bit much and you’re happy to close the door after they wave goodbye and heave a sigh of relief.

I woke up this morning to silence. There was no wind trying to bust its way through my bedroom window, and I rolled over to enjoy the peace a little longer. It’s still windy today. I know because despite not having left my house I can see the flags on the flagpole across the way. I would describe them as “at attention” which means they’re mostly standing straight out from the pole, but are still flapping in the breeze. While the Wind Relative was here they looked more like shirt sleeves that got all twisted up in the washer and if you didn’t know what they were you wouldn’t be able to tell. However, none of the trees (still without any green on them unless they’re pines) are visibly moving and I can’t hear any wuthering. So it’s just a normal day with the Wyoming wind.