Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [70]
So did we learn about another natural alternative to the air-conditioner.
There was still another.
Late one sultry afternoon a big storm moved in, tossing trees and carving out gullies with rivers of rainwater—and rinsing away the humidity and heat. The next day, it was about seventy-two and clear. I was shivering again.
It occurred to me that this new coolness would not be nearly so bracing had it not been for the unbearable weather before.
In our era of high technology, affluent westerners spend billions every year to “get away” to exotic locales. They do so surely to escape the stress and frustration of modern life, but also to relieve its monotony. They spend forty-eight weeks of the year in the same job in a climate-controlled environment; when they go home in the evening, they travel on the same stretch of freeway to a subdivision where all the houses look the same; they watch television programs that reduce the complex issues of life to half-hour segments on a flat screen. They crave diversion, depth, escape. So they fly to Bermuda. Or for a few precious days, they stroll through Disney World’s mockup of the architecturally diverse midwestern downtown their grandparents once ambled through whenever they wanted to, and spend all the money they saved during the previous forty-eight weeks in the same job.
There may be another way. What if they just noticed the weather changing? Those who lack western affluence already rely on the weather for daily variety. New weather alters the look and feel of the landscape without altering your location. You don’t have to travel elsewhere to experience the exotic; the exotic travels to you.
A day or so after the storm, the features of the landscape stood out clear and green. There was a stiff, dry breeze. Big Sur, seemingly, had traveled over to the Midwest. When I joined the threshing crew, it was indeed as though we were somewhere we’d never been. The crew had a ruddy, windswept look, and our straw hats kept blowing off despite our best efforts.
On a chilly morning after the rains, I woke up to find mists rolling forth from the heavy dews like roiling smoke. Half the sun poked over the horizon, intensely orange and perfectly circular like an egg yolk. Several layers of nimbus clouds hung above it like the bough of an enormous tropical tree, or like an outstretched hand with the lower fingers curled under.
Grace told me once: “If the sun rises and hides itself soon, then rain before sundown, and may before noon.” The sun didn’t quite hide itself that day, but as if undecided, the weather remained ambivalent. A strong, cool northern breeze brought scads of differently toned clouds. Some were white tufted cotton balls, some hideous purplish things, and when the sun poked through, they lit up brilliantly. Later the weather became more organized, with the white clouds staying to the right and the purplish ones to the left. In between there was a bright gap, through which a cool, fine mist descended.
Sometimes great weather differences alternated in very short intervals of time or hovered only a few feet apart. On a very breezy day, Bill and I were picking cantaloupes together when out of nowhere the wind changed direction. It had been coming from the south, but now a northerly cloud bank rolled in. A cool breeze splashed against us, swirling and licking through our hair. Then the wind shifted to the west. Bill, who was about fifty yards away from me, exclaimed, “Gee, it’s warm over here!” I was still relishing the cool breeze. For a minute or two, the winds vacillated; sometimes Bill was warm, sometimes I was. It made that much