Yesterday as I was getting ready to go out the door to set up for farmers market, the sky darkened. "Market day," I said. We all like to joke about how Fridays during market time tend to bring either rain -or occasionally hail- or wind. "It's Wyoming, of course there is wind," people like to say.
But yesterday's wind, which began to blow fiercely as we started to set up the tent, was not just "Wyoming wind." It brought something in. Later I called it "wicked" to a friend who is camping and fishing- get this- in the Winds.
I would not say the wind itself was angry. There were tremendous storms again in the SE Wyoming and NE Colorado region, and it was pretty clear, watching the clouds boil in the distance but not move in, that we were on the outer edge of the system. The wind sucked the moisture and the energy out of that edge to deposit somewhere with great power. And it stirred an anger in me that I never would have expected after a beautiful sunrise walk and a calm and sunny but cooler morning and midday.
I found myself railing that I would not go to another market, it simply is not worth the hassle of contending with a need to hold down the tent, not be able to display my delicious food masterpieces, and listen to and try to serve customers over the roar, to make enough to pay my spot fee, ingredients and a bit more. Truth: Of the 4 markets I've participated in this summer, three of them have been served up drenching rains (my first week was spent standing in ankle deep water) or winds that blow tents out of their spots, despite their being heavily weighted as required.
This is not normal, even for Wyoming. I was so parched and exhausted after 2 hours, I called it in, packed up and left. At first I thought, I am being a baby. And then I realized, no, I am not. Unencumbered, I can at least appreciate the power of that wind and, as one other vendor noted she'd seen me do, even dance with it. But I was still angry. The wind brought in something, and it felt like all the ills we are facing as a country and a world, dropped right down onto Laramie. Interestingly, the customers, who did not have a tent to hold down, signs to stash because they were blowing away, and so on, seemed largely unfazed.
I drove back to where I am dog sitting, and the dog supervised while I reassembled and reorganized my market wares. As I was driving, a sedan blew through the stop sign at the side street in front of me. California plates. Doesn't really matter. The two young men in the car looked out the windows at me and laughed. I gave them the finger and was sorely tempted to trail them, pull out in front of them, and get out of my truck and offer to beat the crap out of them. That kind of anger.
Then, after dinner at my own house, I got in my car and started to drive back to the dog's house. Within three or four blocks, I remembered I'd left my phone charging, so I drove back around to get it, double parking because the full green bin blocked easy entrance into the on-street parking spot, and flicking on my hazards, since it was dusk. As I exitted the house, another car flew by my car, and the guys in the vehicle yelled out the windows at my car. I mean flew. The speed limit is 30mph at my house. They were driving at least 50mph, by my estimation.
I wasn't the only angry person out and about last evening. The wind brought something with it. I woke up in the night a couple times thinking about this, and then this morning it was gone. That anger has faded for me, largely. But that illness persists. I think we all know why. And presently, there is no doctor in the house.
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