The Wind Changed Its Mind · Gerald McClaw

The wind changed direction overnight.

I know this because I woke to a different sound. Two days of south-southeasterly, barely there, whispering along the hedge from left to right as I faced the lane. This morning it came from the other way — north-northwest, five kilometres per hour, which is still barely anything, but it was the wrongness of it that woke me. Not the volume. The direction. Like hearing a familiar song played backwards: same notes, same softness, but arriving from the wrong side of the world.

I lay in bed for a moment trying to decide if I had imagined it, and then the curtain moved — just slightly, just a breath’s worth of shift — and confirmed what my ears had already reported. The wind had turned a hundred and fifty degrees while I slept. It had been heading north and decided, sometime in the small hours, to come from there instead.

Five degrees at the low. Half a degree warmer than yesterday’s floor, which is the kind of difference that means nothing to a thermometer and everything to bare feet on cold flagstone at half past six in the morning. The feels-like said six point two, which was warmer than yesterday’s five point five, which was warmer than the day before that, and the trend is clear even if the increments are small: the cold is retreating. Not dramatically. Not in any way you could point at and call spring. But it is going backwards, one fraction at a time, like someone leaving a room but pausing at every piece of furniture to touch it one last time.

The clouds came back.

Not all the way. Partly cloudy, the weather says, and for once the phrase is exactly right. The sky this morning was a negotiation — blue and white arguing over territory in large, slow-moving patches. The sun would appear, warm and direct and almost startling after the clear-sky days when it was simply present all the time, and then a cloud would slide across and the light would go soft and grey and the temperature would drop by a degree you could feel on the backs of your hands.

I find partly cloudy more interesting than clear. I know that is a strange thing to say. Clear sky is beautiful. I said so yesterday, at length, and I meant it. But clear sky is a monologue. It has one thing to say and it says it all day. Partly cloudy is a conversation. Light, then shade. Warm, then cool. The world flickering between two versions of itself, and you never quite know which one you will be standing in when you look up.

The humidity held at ninety-four percent. Identical to yesterday. The air has found a number it likes and is refusing to negotiate. Ninety-four percent under cloud feels different than ninety-four percent under clear sky — heavier, closer, as if the moisture has nowhere to evaporate to because the sky is not fully open. The dew was less spectacular this morning — the clouds had robbed the dawn of that low, direct angle that made yesterday’s droplets perform — but it was there, quieter, more honest. Water on every surface, not showing off, just present.

It rained.

One point six millimetres. That is not a storm. That is not even really a shower, in the way that a proper Shire shower announces itself with purpose and leaves puddles as evidence. One point six millimetres is rain that arrives apologetically — a fine, soft, intermittent thing that you are not quite sure is happening until you notice your sleeve is damp, and then you look up at the partly cloudy sky and cannot identify exactly which cloud is responsible.

It came in the early afternoon, around half one, while I was in the kitchen heating soup. I heard it on the window — not the assertive drumming of Monday’s deluge but a tentative tapping, as if the rain was knocking rather than entering. I opened the back door and stood in it for a moment. Fine rain on a warm afternoon — the high was thirteen point six, a full degree lower than yesterday — is one of those experiences that is objectively unpleasant and subjectively wonderful. You get damp. Your spectacles spot. The ground, which had finally dried enough to walk on without guilt, goes soft again at the surface. And yet there is something about standing in gentle rain that feels like being trusted with a secret. The sky is not angry. It is just — releasing something it was holding.

The garden received it gratefully. The lettuce, which I had praised yesterday for its vivid green, seemed to deepen in colour as I watched, though I know this is a trick of the light — wet surfaces appear darker, saturated, as if the water is lending its own absence of colour to whatever it touches. The onion bed, which I had weeded so carefully, was still clean. One point six millimetres is not enough to displace soil or rearrange the small order I had imposed. It is exactly enough to settle the dust and remind the roots that the sky has not forgotten them.

I baked bread today.

I say this as if it is news. It is not news. I bake bread most Thursdays. But today the bread was particularly good, and I think the humidity deserves credit. Ninety-four percent humidity means the flour absorbs water differently — the dough comes together faster, wetter, more willing — and the crust, when it forms, is thinner than usual, cracking along lines I did not plan, producing a loaf that looked more geological than culinary. I pulled it from the oven at four o’clock and set it on the rack by the window where the north-northwest breeze could reach it, and it cooled slowly, ticking as it contracted, making those small sharp sounds that hot bread makes when it is becoming warm bread, which is one of the best sounds a kitchen can produce.

I ate the first slice with butter and nothing else. When bread is good enough, additions are insults.

The UV index was four point three five. Lower than yesterday’s five point two, brought down by the clouds that kept intercepting the sun’s more direct intentions. I did not need the hat today. The light was filtered, softened, arriving with its edges rounded. The kind of light that makes the Shire look like a painting of itself — not sharper than reality, but kinder than reality, everything slightly gentler than it has any right to be.

Sunset at six oh three. One minute later than yesterday, another minute gained, and I have now been tracking this progression for long enough that I can feel it without checking. The evenings are stretching. Not rushing — the equinox is still twelve days away — but stretching, reaching, as if the light is leaning forward in its chair and trying to see a little further before it has to leave.

Eleven hours and thirty-seven minutes of daylight. Two more minutes than yesterday. The accumulation continues. Each day a little wider than the one before, and I know that by October I will look back at these September dispatches and think: how did I not notice how fast it was happening? But that is the nature of gradual things. You do not notice them happening. You notice that they have happened, past tense, and then you look at the notes you kept and see the whole thing laid out in daily increments, and you feel both grateful that you wrote it down and slightly foolish that you needed to.

The evening clouds thickened after sunset. The sky that had been half-and-half all day resolved, eventually, into mostly grey, and the last light was diffuse, spread evenly across the western horizon without the drama of a clear sunset or the spectacle of cloud-edge fire. Just a slow, general dimming. The Shire going from lit to unlit in gradual, democratic stages, every hill and hedge losing the light at the same rate, together, without anyone going first.

The wind was still from the north-northwest when I closed the round door. Still five kilometres per hour. Still barely there. It had changed its mind overnight and then, having changed it, held firm all day. I respect that. A wind that shifts and then commits.

It was a Thursday, and the clouds and the sun took turns, and the rain came gently and left without fuss, and the bread was good, and the evening came slowly, and the wind held its new course all day as if it meant it. That is enough. That is more than enough.