Winds of change

Wilson Justin writes:

The wind finally packed up and went to Siberia..I think. It has been quiet since Christmas. I was looking at some old journal entries from 2006 which marks the change in wind direction and feel. The usual winter winds are singular and monotonous. It comes from one direction and is steady. I remember the 1960s when the older folks in the village would say that’s old man winter which would be the first fall wind storm except it was in August. The fall wind or the hunting wind would have a warmth to it. The first winter wind was impossible to miss. Made you run for the campfire. Now you have such a mad mixture of wind you don’t even know what to call it. It’s 360 degrees and no sensible outcome. I’ve watched it blow upriver across the Copper River, downriver on our side all at the same time. The rivers used to be swept bare but haven’t been in a while. Good thing the rivers are no longer our highway system. Can’t see the occasional lead or open water, and there is no mist above them to let you know they are there. As you well know the changes are endless but unless you were here in the 1960s and 1970s, difficult to draw contrast. For me Climate change hit home when I first saw rain in January in the early 80s on the Nabesna. Very destructive and without a single reference in the agency circle. Several elder’s however spoke of the grim times we have yet to come to. That’s when I first heard the Story of the time of 2 suns and the time of no summers. The 2 suns story was basically about night and day coming to a temperature equilibrium, the time of no summer seem to be about a gigantic volcano going off which choked off the sun and changed the weather for a generation. The Medicine people story said only a small handful came through that.