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August 18, 2005
Etesian Winds
He is an inlander
who loves the margins of the sea,
and everywhere he goes he carries
a bag of earth on his back.
Stanley Kunitz, from "The Mulch"
For someone whose connection to place is most often through the sight and the sound of trees and sweeping mountainsides of granite, spruce, and balsam fir, an island, ringed by dunes and sand and sea can be disconcerting. Like the mountains of my more northern winter home, though, Martha's Vineyard can be a place that demands an inward focus as much as it invites one to gaze out toward the watery horizon where the sea curves away and folds into the distant sky.
As Jen, Orion, Pika, Pemi, and I were retreating from Chappaquiddick’s East Beach late last Thursday evening, I was suddenly moved to turn toward the familiar sound of wind playing through the upper branches of a small cluster of red pine trees that overhung the road. The gust passed quickly through the trees on its way toward the dune grasses and waves beyond, but it was enough to bring me back to the world I knew I would be returning to soon.
These late-summer gusts, perhaps our own echoes of the Etesian winds of another place and time, herald the coming change from the languid, eternal afternoons of summer to the more hurried, harried pace of the coming academic year. Etesian winds also mark, significantly, last Thursday’s end of summer's dog days. The end of the dog days is heralded by the heliacal rising of the star Sirius, when the star becomes visible before the dawn after a nearly five-week absence. The event marked the celestial close of summer for the ancient Egyptians, who based their entire calendar on this day. Sirius, also called the Dog Star, appears in the constellation Canis Major and is the brightest star in our sky. Sirius’ rising was given great significance in the ancient Mediterranean and the Etesian winds that follow continue to be important to sailors from Greece to Egypt. The winds were once thought to cause the flooding of the Nile by pushing back the great river’s current with their power (this idea was summarily rejected by Herodotus in his History). For me, this day gives me pause to look ahead to the reappearance of both Canis Major and Minor along with the whole of Orion's seasonal story as it arcs across the night sky.
Last week, Jen and I sat on the beach at Long Point on the Island's southern shore and watched a metaphor declare and explicate itself in the currents that unfurled just below our sandy, outstretched legs. While the sun drifted slowly toward the dunes to the west, we watched the brackish water from Tisbury Great Pond, which had found its way around a sand bar into the open sea, change its course, and, in a single instant, cease its seaward flow and begin to flow inland, finally overcome by the ocean's rolling waves. Although this moment of both earthly and celestial drama repeats each day, I don't recall ever having seen this moment of change so clearly played out before.
I understand that the opening from pond to sea at Long Point is impermanent, and needs to be regularly persuaded to remain open, so finding it open is always a pleasant surprise. As we sat alongside the gap and watched children of all ages enjoy the flow of warm water out from the Pond, I recalled having visited here nearly twenty years ago with my parents and my father's parents, and I clearly remember my grandfather standing knee deep in the gentle current watching me float by toward the ocean, stopping myself on a protruding sandbar before reaching the incoming ocean waves.
As I watched eight-month old Orion play with Jen and her parents in that same brackish flow, I came to recognize in the changing tidal current the beginning of a new stage of our own lives with our son, as he becomes more and more a part of our lives and our extended family. I feel as though I have only begun to understand each phase of my life with our son, but as autumn looms on the horizon, and Orion's story reappears even more brightly and clearly in the minutes before morning dawns over the Atlantic, I hope that his stars will help to guide us all.
...I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
Stanley Kunitz, from "The Layers"
Posted by pavel at August 18, 2005 7:25 AM
Comments
What a lovely article. It is so vivid, one does not even need the pictures. But post them anyway! Miss Orion very much.
Posted by: Gina at August 18, 2005 6:32 PM
Hasn't he grown up? What a cutie.
Posted by: Melissa at August 23, 2005 12:09 PM