The Answer Is Blowing In The Wind

In the novel Heidi by Johanna Spyri, Heidi goes to sleep to the sound of the wind in the towering trees on the mountain where she lives with her grandfather. Later, she is so homesick for the sound that she sleepwalks searching for it.

We don't live in the Alps, but we do live in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains in Washington, and we have the same kind of towering trees. The trees are so tall that even when there are strong winds, we are protected from the worst of them. The sound is a comforting kind of whoosh and swoosh, and the winds, when they do reach us, carry with them the freshness of the mountains or the ocean, depending on the direction they come from. In the fall and winter, there are times when I can smell snow, even when it is falling many miles hig and far away.

When those winds come, our dog, a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, on the short side, puts his nose to the wind and sniffs. When the wind is stiff, he sits solidly on the ground and points his nose to the sky, his ruff blowing back, his eyes almost closed in concentration.

What does he smell? Is he smelling the ducks living on a lake ten miles away? The neighbor's dinner cooking next door? Does the wind carry exotic smells from Hawaii? Or, like Pigpen's possible ancient Egyptian dirt in his grime, remnants of life long ago?

Whatever he smells, Collin always looks deeply satisfied when he is finished, as if he has just completed a job well done. His contentment is deep and tangible. He moves on to the next thing without seeming to linger on the moment. But the moment lingers with me, leaving me to wonder.