Indelibly etched in my memory is an image of tall reed grass rippling with the tempo of a windy day, the tips dipping in deep troughs and cresting in waves like a rough sea, yet rhythmic as a symphony. How like this scene my life has become.
I was just seven-years-old when my mother asked me to follow her out onto the dike to see something “wondrous.” So, we made our way carefully down the hill from our home to the road that crossed celery fields newly planted with pale green shoots. Halfway across the lowland, we turned down the dirt road that divided the western field and followed it to the great wall of earth that stretched from one hill to the other across an arm of Bear Lake, holding water back from farmland.
From the top of the dike the sea of high grass lay at our feet with stiff spires of purple loosestrife waving in the space between it and open water. I felt the music of the wind as it tossed my hair and pushed the fabric of my clothes in ripples against my skin. My mother raised her arms above her head and began waving them in sync with the scene before us. She lifted her feet and twirled with the whirling air, catching my eye in invitation.
Shyly I began to follow her movements, stumbling a little, unsure of my steps.
“Let your spirit flow with the rhythm of the wind,” she said, “and the wind will teach you to dance.”
Soon I was dipping and stretching like the wind tossed reeds. Laughing, we performed our breezy ballet, weaving around each other and swaying with the playful current of air, two willowy human reeds dancing above the sea of grass on the long man-made hill.
It was my mother’s custom to express profound truths simply. Like a multi-leveled sutra, the phrase she had spoken that day followed me as I grew, taking on more meaning as my experience increased. As a child I took it quite literally and danced with the wind every chance I got, reveling in the freedom of the exercise. In my adolescent years I saw it as a cry for independence and I came dangerously close to losing the balance required to maintain the dance. After many years of practice I understood that the wind represented something my mind could barely grasp, a higher intelligence that was mine and everyone else’s at once, a source of love, inspiration and guidance. By remaining receptive to it, flowing with it, I found it led me to accomplish things I would not have imagined possible. It knew no limitations and thereby expanded mine.
Now that I have passed my fiftieth year, I believe I finally know the true meaning of dancing with the wind. It requires spontaneity and a receptive mind. Its rewards are as varied as its steps. The dance is comforting a troubled friend, reassuring a frightened child, listening to an elderly aunt, crying with a grieving neighbor, celebrating with those who have found love, welcoming new life, and teaching others how to dance.
I visited the scene of my dance lesson today. The celery is gone, the land sold. Soon, nature will reclaim her former wetland, and tall reed grass will stand again where celery grew.
The reed grass danced here for centuries, since the last ice age. Our spirits have danced here even longer, and I know the dance will go on long after this dancer is gone. But, are we really ever gone, or do we simply become one with the wind that is the breath of our lives?