A cool front came in and all the windows in the house are open.  Ahh! Fresh air from a cool, refreshing breeze!  On days like today, forget Montana, Italy and every other place on the bucket list to visit.  Sitting in the backyard with a hot cup of coffee and the tree leaves rustling is as good as it gets!

Even the puppy dogs are energized with more bounce in their pounce and bite in their bark.  Maybe it’s just the wind’s relief after a frigid cold winter.  Maybe it’s just a change to something new.  Maybe it’s just enjoying the moment.  I don’t know, but sitting here watching invisible air rustle visible leaves makes me envious of the wind.

Somewhere right now the wind is blowing through an early spring potato field and elsewhere, over the top of a sky scraper, an anemometer is turning in circles to measure the wind’s speed.  Someplace on earth right now a child is crying while the wind tries to dry away the tears faster than they can fall.  The wind is also blowing over ocean waves hitting a beach and catching the smells of the sand and sea, life and death, in nature’s free air freshener.

At the same time in big cities, where there’s nothing but brick, pavement and glass, pollution rises up from a man made fog while the wind catches it and disperses it away as if it were nature’s paramedic.  Somewhere a goat herder gently brisks a branch to move his herd to the other side of a hill to avoid harsh winds, and somewhere else a warm, smoky plume gently swirls out of a bar-b-que pit while the remaining smoke puffs away at cooking meat.

Somewhere a deer raises its head to sniff the curious smell that came downwind before it turns and bolts away to safety. Somewhere in combat fatigues men breathe heavily as gunfire is exchanged, and in a moment, one will lay gasping his last breath from mortal wounds.

In artic regions icy cold wind freezes everything in its path except for the penguins huddled together in an unlikely place to hatch their young, yet in a much warmer area, a kite flies high in the wind while in an open field, stubby little fingers and a Kool Aid mustache hold the string in amazement.

Oh to travel in the wind and see what wind sees!  Oh to paint invisible air to see its music, smell its rainbow and taste its sunset.

The wind does what it wants.  It comes and goes at will.  It can be predicted, but never truly foretold.  Today the wind may bring rain to hydrate the earth, yet tomorrow bring arid gusts that dehydrate today’s work.

From every direction, every speed, every rhythm of nature’s chorus, the winds move, it dances, it plays a timeless, seasonal, atmospheric symphony.

Maybe it is not the big things that make life rich, but the pennies of the moment.  I don’t know.

Maybe one day I can afford to fly for months on end to a Hawaiian paradise, travel Montana mountains, explore ancient Roman coliseums and visit the center of the earth, but that won’t be today, if ever.

It doesn’t matter though.  Today I smile at my wealth.  I feel sorry for poor people who only have a lot of money.  The rich, like me, get to sit in the backyard, hold a hot cup of coffee, enjoy a fresh, cool breeze gently rustling the leaves and just imagine, what the wind sees.