My Local Wind Symphony Orchestra—Part 1

The “downtown” center of my little corner of an Appalachian backcountry county is an intersection containing a small grocery store and one house. We live half a mile away, by the crow’s route, but over three miles by car. It's a community that can be found only on a very local map. It has two unique attributes. The one that most local folks will tell you about is the artesian spring across from the store—where water endlessly flows from a steel pipe. As the story goes, someone tried drilling for oil, several generations back. They never struck black gold, but after going down many hundreds of feet, they tapped into a perpetual (so far, anyway) supply of pure water. Some folks still stop there to fill their jugs up with the clean, cold water.

The second attraction of my community is its Wind Symphony Orchestra. That's right—our tiny burg has its very own wind orchestra! Ask any local other than me, however, and they'd stare at you, puzzled. They might even hoot over such a silly thought.

However, our Wind Symphony Orchestra is for real. I've listened to its fine performances many times. My peak music treat came on a winter’s night last year, as I was soaking contentedly in the hot tub. It was a dark, breezy evening—with gentle waves of wind wafting through the surrounding woods. As I lay back in the tub, I fell into my usual deep relaxation. My mind dropped all trivial thoughts, as my attention turned to the complexly-blended sounds of the wind moving through the forest.

The breeze was slightly unsteady, but soft. Waves would periodically move through the trees. I could hear them coming from a half mile or more distant. They would approach, whoosh quietly by me, and flow off down the hollow. Small, abrupt gusts would intermittently speed by, whistling through the trees and kicking up dry leaves. Whirls of eddies would spin off these gusts and twirl around me, causing leaves to leap up and dance in circles. One gentle wind after another would crest, spill, spread, and then quietly dissipate. For long moments between them silence would rule—an utter stillness in the air. Then I'd hear the far-off hush of the next wave headed towards me. My mind's eye would go out to it and ride along, as it sailed my way, through the woods.

The night's soothing breeze wrote the score for my Wind Symphony Orchestra. It was a concerto of many movements—each one related to the others in a coherent, creative masterpiece. The passing waves were played out by the various musical movements—all adagio. They were then punctuated by brief, gusty allegros that enthusiastically offset the slower, wavelike parts of the score.

My Wind Symphony Orchestra contains several sections—most all of them made up, of course, of wind instruments. There are hardly any drums, cymbals or other impulsive percussion; I guess we can’t afford them in such a small community. The ebb and flow of the symphony they were playing featured, in a beautifully rotating manner, the orchestra's various wind sections. I could hear the melody shift from section to section, as the surrounding instruments played a gentle backdrop to the main theme. Now there might be a single wind section playing its solo. Now a duet between two sections. Now the whole orchestra building into a grand crescendo, in a magnificent blending of voices.

More on the symphony next time…