The wind has been blowing crazy for somewhere around a week. gusts that can knock down children. Wind that buffets you and batters you and yanks things from your hands unexpectedly. Today I saw it coming. A cloud or a fog or a rainstorm? Dense grey-brown air headed towards us and you could see it's edge. It's not rain, it's dry, it's mildly gritty, it's dust. I have not seen it's like in over 20 years here. This is what drought really means.
The wind tells me it's a natural, normal and even necessary phase for us. That we must endure this drought and wind and dust. I sat and pondered what could possibly be the use of lifting the soil in the air and depositing it elsewhere? Then I knew. Before man tilled the soil the only kind of soil that ever lay barren and dry for the wind to lift was barren soil. And where did that lifted poisoned soil inevitably catch and fall? In the most fertile and moist filtering of places, tree copses. In due time that poisoned soil would be mixed and cleansed. Eventually the poisoned place from whence it lifted would be filled with leaves carried similarily on gentler winds. Leaves and stems and twigs that would rot and make new fertile soil. So the earth is renewed.
Unfortunately, comes a creature who sees fit to leave fertile soil bare and dry. Not so much now as in the past, we're learning. Farmers who make that error lose their soil to the farmers who didn't and so we learn. Still, we yet need to learn planting and tilling techniques which allow planting and weed control without then stirring up dry soil to be lifted into the hot wind in these deep dust clouds that dim the sun and drive every creature to ground.