Windmills on the Ridge

Monday, we drove to Danville to see Shane's grandmother, who's at Geisinger with some really serious stuff going on.  The ride down was one of those kinds of rides where any and all distractions are welcome.  Really welcome. 

So with that in mind, imagine a sapphire-blue sky, hills of orange-yellow-and red-painted leaf-covered trees, and white wind turbines planted like great big tri-petal flowers, and imagine my delight at the sight.  Despite the controversy and bile and chest-beating and rhetoric on the subject of wind farms, especially in the area where I live, they've always fascinated me.  Back when I was flying my airplane all over the place, I would be downright gleeful to see the wind farms in New York State.  It meant I was almost home from Batavia.  They have navigational landmark value to pilots.  The first time I saw a real-life wind turbine on the ground, we were headed to a Sabres game.  It was the time of day in the winter when the sun has gone down behind the hills, and the snow and bare trees and sky and the very air take on a powdery quality.  Those tall wind turbines on the wind farm along a road called Centerville Road, looked silvery and shimmery, a little ghostly and surreal, a little like giant alien sunflowers.  I couldn't take my eyes off them.

Monday, the wind turbines were turning gently in the wind that was running along the ridge.  We were heading south-east somewhere between Mansfield and Williamsport on Interstate 80 in the late morning.  I needed to see something whimsical, and in this frame of mind, the wind turbines, wind-flowers, standing chalk-white in contrast to the metallic blue cloudless sky and the magic red leaves, fit the bill.  They were comforting to me.  It felt like the wind turbines were waving and saying that everything is going to be all right at Geisinger, no matter what happens.  I couldn't take my eyes off them.

It was that kind of day.  Things in this world can be really ugly, terrifying and out of control.  When things start feeling like this for me, I really start looking for the beauty in everything.  I found it in spades in those wind turbines on Monday.  I'm not trying to stir up controversy about the wind farms, but I know all you have to do around some people is utter the words "wind" and "farm" and they'll turn into screaming banshees.  I don't have time for this.  This is my blog, and I have a free pass to come right out and say I think the windmills are beautiful.  If you disagree with me and have your own blog, feel free to badmouth me in your corner of cyberspace, and then guess how much of a flip I give.  You see what you want to see in the world, I'm more convinced of this every day.  If you want to see fear and ugliness, that's what'll greet you at every turn.  If you choose to see the beauty in things, the world becomes a much less scary place.  In those windmills on the ridge, I choose to see wind-flowers waving in the breeze at me, reassuring me that no matter what happens in Danville over the next few days, things are going to be all right.  I choose to see the beauty.  That's all.