Z is for Zephyr ~ The West Wind, 1969 ~ Present

Theme ~ My 50 Years in America

Flora and Zephyr (1875) William-Adolphe Bouguereau

I will end this A to Z Challenge with Zephyr, the Greek god of the west wind, the greatest wind of all, the gentle wind of spring and early summer, and the wind of the desert mountains where I live. 

Those of you who enjoy reading and studying Greek mythology will remember the Anemoi, the Greek gods of the  winds, each representing a different wind direction. These wind brothers enjoyed their sisters in more ways than one, Flora (the Roman name for the Greek goddess Chloris, sister of Zephyr) is pictured with him above. He was also the husband of another sister, Iris, the goddess of the rainbow. And, strangely, he was believed to have fathered two horses, later belonging to Achilles. And he wasn't through, but it would take up too much space here to tell it all.  No wonder I was so intrigued when, as a teenager, I was seriously reading about the gods of Greek mythology. 

I fell in love with this soft desert wind as soon as it wrapped itself around me in Santa Fe's central plaza so many years ago. 

Here in the canyon, the west wind is the prevailing wind and for most of the year it is gentle and sweet, cooling me down in the summer heat and helping to dry laundry on the line. 

Sometimes it can get fierce, but usually the strong winds come from other directions to pry loose even the largest tumble weeds, which then clog up our fences and stop our cars in their tracks. The winds are always scary in the summer when it is dry and hot, and you worry about fires. And it's no fun to drive through the desert in the Wrangler when the winds are blowing hard and you can't talk to each other because you can't hear. Expensive too, as it makes the jeep use much more gas than it normally does.

Man is now taming the winds, setting up more and more wind turbines, all over the pass here and down in the Mojave desert. While I love the idea of alternative energy sources, the sheer number of turbines are beginning to scare me. Also, I read that all 15,000 wind turbines in California combined provide energy to 350,000 or 1% of households, which raises the question: How much of the desert and other land areas  will be needed to bring this up to say 10%? And then what?

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Thoughts on the A to Z Challenge

Looking back on my 50 years in this country has been revealing, sometimes difficult, always challenging. I appreciate your comments so much as they helped to shed light on some issues and most certainly gave me new insights into who I was then.

Thank you Arlee Bird for inventing this Challenge that helps so many of us to find new and interesting blogs and make new friends. Thanks to the hosts for taking the time to ensure its success. Also, many thanks to Julie Flanders: I have no idea what your minion duties entailed, but I do know that I have rediscovered you as a blogger friend and I want to keep in touch.

Now, if we did this in Swedish, we would still have three more letters to do! Just a thought, as the month of April comes to an end.




Source: Wikipedia & Google



Addendum

Since some of you have expressed an interest in reading all the posts, I decided to put all three years of my A to Z experience in Pages, right under the blog header, one page for each year. It will be much easier to find the posts that way. I should be done by the end of the week. Thank you for your interest.