Photography And Half-Thoughts By Mitchell Hegman

...because some of it is pretty and some of it is not.

Thursday, April 17, 2025

A History with Wind

Yesterday afternoon, bruising winds shouldered hard against the house—some gusts so strong they made the framing crack its knuckles. Outside, low clouds were swept along, and even the sturdiest pine trees flailed without pause.

In a single word: scary.

The word for fear of the wind is anemophobia. As a kid, I had it—though I didn’t know the name. What troubled me most was how wind, an invisible force, could shove the world around so violently. And when it came, it came for the whole valley.

I remember one especially fierce storm: limbs torn from trees by unseen hands, a bucket skittering full speed down the street. The strongest gales hit the house like sacks of sand. And twice in my life, I’ve been deep in the forest when a microburst muscled through the pines, making them sway and twist, groaning and cracking as they bent. Both times, I froze in place—shocked and confused—as several lodgepole pines toppled right in front of me.

In a word: anemophobia.

—Mitchell Hegman

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