A Beautiful Summer Afternoon

Today is a perfect summer afternoon. The colors are bright and strong from the deep blue of the sky to the golden sun at its center. They contrast nicely with the abundant greens of the trees, bushes, and grass. Best of all the strong breeze keeps the sun's rays from beating too harshly and makes the rice fields sing.

Rice fields surround me on my rides to and from work, and it's almost time for harvest. The canals have been running lower and lower, and the fields are finally drying out from last week's endless rain. The plants are full and alternating dark and light green as the wind sways them. The rustling sounds remind me of home.

Not my hometown. Not really. For all that I grew up surrounded by corn and soybean fields, I lived in town, not on a farm. Also, corn grows tall so quickly you don't spend a whole lot of time looking down on it. Even if you can look down on beans, when you're driving past, you don't so much hear the plants rustling, as you do the wind whipping past the open windows.

No, this sound puts me in The Northwoods of Wisconsin, where I have spent many summer weeks. It reminds me of those days in late June and early July when it was finally warm enough to go freeze yourself in the lake and then lay in the sun and listen to the water lap. It reminds me of laying in a hammock in between the two cabins, listening to the birds and the breeze in the trees.

Wind is a strange phenomenon, isn't it? We can't touch it, but it touches us. We can't see it, but we can see where it's been. We can't smell it, but we can smell things on it. It doesn't have a sound, except when it touches other things. We can hear when it wanders over fields, winds through trees, and whistles in the hollows of our ears. It interacts with the world, without fully being part of it.

In a few hours the sun will turn the distant white clouds red, and the wind will usher in the slightly cooler night air. Today has been a good day. Let us hope tomorrow is just as nice!