Maria and I went to Glens Falls for dinner and to pick up some art supplies for her work, on the way back, we came across “The Flats” near Argyle, an open flat stretch of land where new homes, stark and very much alone, dot the landscape. There was a numbing, strong cold wind blowing across the flats and each of us jumped out of the car and saw our own opportunity: me, to capture the sense of isolation about this big new house in this vast and empty space, and Maria, getting a video of the wind blowing some plastic around a truck. We could barely stand up in this wind, and I dug out  the last verse of Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “The Wind:”

“Oh wind, a blowing all day long!

Oh wind, that sings so loud a song!

O you that are so strong and cold

O blower, are you young or old?

Are you a beast of field and tree

Or just a stronger child than me?

O wind, a blowing all day long

O wind, that sings so loud a song!”