Mind Over Weather by Helen Henderson

 

 

Windmaster  by Helen Henderson
Click the title for purchase information

 

Author's Note: This post was written with a triple-digit temperature and high humidity. The air is cloying.

Escaping the heat has taken various forms. During my youth, a hose or small splash pool provided a cool-down after working in the fields. The basement's concrete helped block out high temperatures making it easier to sleep. In later years, the porch swing at sunset at Grandma's mountain home helped beat back the temperatures. 

As a married couple, my husband and my first home did not have any air conditioning. The loud, bulky fans used to pull heat from the building were replaced by window air conditioners. However, they had their own side effects. Only one upstairs room and half the downstairs was really habitable. Despite the four steps between the bathroom and bedroom, you felt wetter after a shower than before. 

Daytime respite came from slow walks around the grocery store and hanging out at the library. Evenings were filled with sunset walks on the boardwalk hoping to catch some breeze off the bay. The spectacle of people loading their boats onto trailers provided entertainment as did swatting mosquitoes large enough to saddle and ride. (The unofficial state bird was the mosquito.)

Which brings to contemporary summer in the more southern. Surprising, temperatures in our former town are hotter than in the new state. Despite the luxury of central air conditioning and a sunroom to watch the birds flitter from tree to tree, the library is still a favored hangout.

A word of explanation about the post's title. To prepare for an outing into the sauna provided by nature or when a storm knocks out the power, there is still one final way of staying cool -- mind over weather. If you believe the temperatures are colder than they are, then the body reacts accordingly. The following snippit from Windmaster is one of the readings to tell my body, it is not hot outside. It is cold.

 

Ellspeth’s world reduced to the shifting gray shadow that was Tairneach. Her eyes hurt from straining to see through the curtain of snow and rain that almost obscured the stallion. She rode with one foot scraping the rocks on the side of the narrow trail while her other hung over a thousand-foot precipice. One misstep and both rider and mount would plummet to the valley floor. The driving rain stung every spot of unprotected skin like a thousand cuts. Icy rivulets ran off her wide-brimmed hat. They sneaked beneath the collar of the lake seal cloak and ran down her neck. Waterlogged, her clothes sucked every ounce of heat from her body. Only where her legs lay against Cadno’s coat did she have vague feeling. Hours of riding in the howling maelstrom of cold and wet had dulled her mind to anything beyond the need to stay in the saddle...

Cadno’s pace quickened. Ellspeth peered through ice-crusted eyelashes to see what had excited the animal. The brown headed toward a shadow where the rock wall curved back from the ledge. A cave, Ellspeth’s cold-numbed mind supplied after Tairneach disappeared into what appeared to be a pile of boulders. She bounced in the saddle as Cadno trotted into the black maw. The narrow slit opened into a small chamber, then the colt walked into a larger room where the storm didn’t reach. Ellspeth’s sigh of relief at the sudden release from the bruising winds frosted the air.

 ~ I hope you enjoyed the thoughts and cooling pictures. Until next month, stay safe (and cool) and read.   Helen

To purchase the Windmaster Novels: BWL

Helen Henderson lives in western Tennessee with her husband. While she doesn’t have any pets in residence at the moment, she often visits a husky who have adopted her as one the pack. Find out more about her and her novels on her BWL author page.