Song of the Wind

May there be Sunshine in the Windows of Your House...

Always there is Christmas. There will always be Christmas as long as there are on earth unselfish men and women who can think of others as well as themselves. Christmas is a package done up in tinsel and wrapped with a pretty ribbon, gay gifts of remembrance. It is a tree with bright lights, smelling freshly of the forest, reflecting the well-being and contentment of the household in which it stands. It is a candle in the window whose cheery light speaks a friendly greeting to the world that passes by. Christmas is the sparkling diamonds of light in the eyes of a little child opening the gifts of the Season; the delighted cries of children playing with their toys and the pleasure in the eyes of parents seeing their children so happy. It is the warm salutation of strangers meeting in the street, wishing each other with nothing more than a nod the joys of the Season. It is the warm handclasp of friends expressing in a word or so the joy and the generous spirit of true friendship. Christmas is the time for memories when a furtive tear bespeaks eloquently the sadness of separation and loss; at a time, though, when, loved ones far away seem nearer and dearer. It is the beloved carols of Yule sung by your neighbors on your doorstep, and the sermon preached in the little church up the street, and the hymns sung by the choir proclaiming "peace on earth; good will towards men." Christmas is your mother in the savory kitchen, preparing the turkey for dinner, and your dad busily getting in the way. The spirit of Christmas is the light that has dispelled for many centuries past, and will dispel for many centuries to come, the dark clouds of evil that have threatened from time to time past and will threaten from time to time in the future to envelop all of mankind. It is the light that has warmed civilization in the darker moments like the sun shining in the windows of your house. The spirit of Christmas proclaims the brotherhood of man. It is more powerful than the mightiest cannon; it has defeated armies; it has broken the strongest chains of servility. The spirit of Christmas has made gentle men into great leaders; it has turned brutal men of evil and avarice into weaklings to be scorned and forgotten. It is the light of goodness and kindness, the light of faith, hope and charity that warms mankind in dark, troublesome moments as the sunshine is warm and comforting coming in the windows of your house . R.C.

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS ARIZONA HIGHWAY COMMISSION

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS is published monthly by the Arizona Highway Department a few miles north of the confluence of the Gila and Salt in Arizona. Address: ARIZONA HIGHWAYS, Phoenix, Arizona. $3.00 per year in U.S. and possessions; $3.50 elsewhere. 35 cents each. Entered as second-class matter Nov. 5, 1941, at Post Office in Phoenix, under Act of March 3, 1879. Copyrighted, 1951, by the Arizona Highway Department.

The wind is simply air in motion. Air has substance like wood or water, it has pressure, it can acquire heat and hold a temperature, and it can travel from place to place. You can't weigh air ordinarily because you would be weighing it in an ocean of air. One cubic centimeter of air, however, weighed in a vacuum on a delicate balance scale at a temperature of zero degrees Centigrade and at a pressure of 760 millimeters of mercury at sea level at the latitude of New York City, would weigh 0.012928 grams. The air which affects our lives is a layer of air seven or eight miles thick, called the troposphere, which is next to the earth. This air has pressure (14.7 pounds per square inch at sea level) and when various factors, one of which is temperature, cause changes in this pressure the air starts moving. Then we have wind. We cannot see it. We can hear it. The song of the wind is the most wonderful music on earth, and at times the most terrifying in its angry moments.

Air, like water, gets hot and cold. A basic principle of the physics of air is that cold air is heavier than warm air. On a hot summer's day in the Arizona desert, the air can reach temperatures of from 110 to 115 degrees Fahrenheit and, four times we know of, it has reached 127 degrees. Cooler air a few miles away at higher elevations starts pushing the hot air around and the result is the light desert winds of summer which are so wonderfully refreshing and whose hum of contentment is recorded by that most delicate instrument, the palo verde tree. The wind has no master; it knows no bounds. A great air mass can lie stagnant far to the north of us for days and weeks. It grows colder and colder and finally starts moving south, sounds like shrill trumpets marking its journey. As it travels it reacts to the Coriolis force caused by the earth moving on its axis, and then the moving air mass begins to rotate within itself in a clockwise direction. The winds, born in the air mass, blow around their stern parent, and also blow in all directions. When great air masses, one cold and dry, the other warm and moisture-laden, meet, a storm is born. There is rain, and the rain also is an instrument which records the music of the wind. Air masses warmed by the sun in the tropics affect the whole earth. This tropical air, when heated by a burning sun, becomes lighter and is forced upwards by the heavier air in the latitudes around it. This air rises in the tropics, descends at about Latitude 20 North and South. Some of the air returns to the tropics, part goes northward carrying heat and water vapor. These winds, going toward the north, become the "prevailing winds" for us.

The song of the wind depends upon the wind's intensity. This is measured in prosaic terms of miles per hour and is described by the weather man with the familiar: "light," 1-7 m.p.h., "gentle," 8-12 m.p.h.; "moderate," 13-18 m.p.h.; "fresh," 19-24 m.p.h.; "strong," 25-38 m.p.h.; "gale," 39-54 m.p.h.; "whole gale," 55-75 m.p.h.; and "hurricane," above 75 m.p.h. You can tell the wind force by the lazy smoke drift of a mesquite fire in the desert (light); by the uneasy movement of leaves and twigs on the ground (gentle); by singing leaves in trees (moderate, fresh); by whistling telegraph wires (strong); and by the sharp sounds of breaking limbs on trees and shingles torn from roofs (gale). The furious roar of the whole gale and hurricane, which luckily so few of us experience, can best be enjoyed in a storm cellar.

Much of the beauty of the earth is the work of the wind: the delicate patterns of a sand dune; spring flowers dancing merrily in a mountain meadow; tumbleweeds hurrying along over a naked plateau to be heaped against a fence; ripples on a lake in summer; leaves sweeping along a lonely road in autumn; cloud formations in the sky; eroded canyon walls; tree shapes formed by the patient wind. The wind hums, whistles, sings or shouts as it goes about its business of planting seed, raising dust clouds, pushing storms hither and yon as the seasons change. There is the soft murmur in the wind of spring, containing idle gossip about flowers, bees, birds and gentle things. The winds of summer, reacting to the power house we call the sun, is fitful and variable in its gypsy travels and in its music reflects its temperamental moods.

Winter's wind is a churlish fellow. Before its strident approach even the weathercocks take wings. This wind lifts its voice in ribald and raucous song, shouting a mad ballad of the north, of glaciers, of frigid and isolated mountain peaks, of a world of ice and snow. It travels high and fast, roaring out in demonic glee its song of the season. This wind of the north piles the snow deep by the wayside; roars across the plateau; bends the juniper in a strong, impatient grasp; hurries the cold clouds across the gray skies; weaves fancy patterns of icy lace in the boughs of trees. It rattles loose shingles on roofs, reminds one of ghosts when it howls under eaves, and when it blows down empty streets on cold winter nights the song it sings is a mournful song, as if it were giving voice to all the torments and sorrow of mankind since life began. The wind has many voices; each voice tells a different tale. There is a wind voice for every season, because only with the wind, harsh or gentle, can the season sing its song. Listen to the wind and the song it sings. Knowing the wind song, you'll better understand the world in which you live.... R. C.