A little boy sat watching the leaves being swirled in the air by a Dust Devil when his Grandfather
came and sat beside him. "You look very thoughtful, what are you thinking about?", asked the old man.
"Where does the wind come from, granpa?"said the boy, squinting to keep
the dust from his eyes. And why does it make such a mess?", he continued.
"Mother Nature owns the wind, but she doesn't always do a good job of
making it behave. Some days it just gets out of hand and runs wild.
Pointing to the sky the boy asked "Does it blow the clouds around too?"They watched the thin layer
of scratchy cloud, strung out in long streamers across the horizon.
"Sometimes it does, other times the clouds and the wind are just playing chasings.
"Does the wind make it rain?"
"Oh no, the clouds own the rain, and the wind is jealous about that,
Sometimes they don't get on very well at all, the wind and the clouds. The wind will make the clouds
angry and that's when they get all dark and cover the sun. If the wind gets too pushy the clouds throw
rain and roar with thunder and lightning to try and scare it off, but the wind just keeps on blowing
and that's when we get bad storms.
"Does the wind do any good, ever?"the boy asked.
"It certainly does, it makes peoples windmills work and sailors are always
needing the wind make their yachts go. Sometimes the wind cools the land after a real hot day, but that's
when it just puffs up a breeze. It dries the washing on the clothes lines and helps you fly your kite.
The wind can be really good when it wants to. It just does try very often.
"They sat in silence for while, thinking about the wind and clouds, then
the boy looked very seriously at his grandfather and said "when I act bad mum makes me stay in doors
and I can't go out and play. If I fight with my sister she makes me sit in the corner. I wish I was
the wind, then I could do whatever I wanted to, and no body could boss me around.
"Now don't get me wrong son, the wind doesn't always get it's own way.
Mom Nature has her own punishments she hands out. She gets angry and makes the wind spend days out
blowing the water into waves. Hard work that. Then another time she gets cranky with the clouds and
makes them SO cold, that the rain freezes into ice and snow and the clouds can't hang onto it and
they dry out, loose their thunder and lighting and sometimes just turn into fog.
"Wind can be real cold too", said the boy. "Does she cause that as well?
Because I don't like it when it gets real cold.
"Yes she does, but to make up for that she lets us have the fire place to
get warm again. She owns fire too.
© Mickey Benefiel
|