The wind is in from Africa, blowing in great swirls over the tops of the Pyrannees, carrying sand from the desert. The light is so strange, like a partial solar eclipse. It’s hard to say what color the air has become. Perhaps it’s yellowy violet and grey. It’s as if the spectrum had been disrupted by some alien force. It makes everything feel unsettled. The dogs are barking at the wind itself, nothing else. The strange warm wind.
Even though it’s a Sunday afternoon, no one is taking their country walk except the few diligent dog owners. The laundry dried on the line faster than in a machine and the young plants in their pots, waiting for the right moment to feel their roots spreading in the ground, are aching in their constantly redrying dirt.
And now the wind increases. The pines are roiling as if in a gale. Then they settle before another wave of wind rolls in. You would imagine that the wind would clear the air yet it brings the endless sands of the Sahara, the grains pulverized to dust as they smash against each other’s silica crystals.
Now the wind has calmed to wafting air. There is a white luminescence everywhere as the sun begins to break through the lifting clouds of sand over the mountain tops. The white blossoms on the apple and cherry trees glow. The mood is moving. Joy is no longer suppressed. The air waits to see if it will become spring again, warmed by the brightening sun.
