It was startling. Not just during the front that brought the year's first snow, but well before, all the way back into the summer. For every time we launched our boat onto the bay or ocean, there were at least three other planned trips that had to be canceled because of the wind. The wind also was troublesome during the deer and turkey hunting seasons, giving motion and sound to the woods. Wildlife goes onto red alert when it is windy.
Animals have to be extra cautions.
The wind erodes their keen senses of sight and sound, and, for deer, it disrupts the ability to scent danger. Deer do more watching and waiting when it is windy, their ears upright like miniature satellite dishes, their shiny black nose into the wind, their eyes bugged to spot danger. Sometimes they will spend the day bedded in a thicket. About the time you think the wind is the worst ever, you recall other occasions when it was devastating, and you realize that the wind, like most things in nature, is cyclic. In the mid-30s, the wind took out most of my Granddad's apple orchard and uprooted many of the ancient oaks and chestnuts in his woodlot.