As the sun began to set, the wind came up. Just a breeze at first with a few insistent gusts. The gusts took control and our motorhome began to rock with the harder billows. It was getting darker and soon we would be rocking with the buffets in the black, starless night. Between bursts of wind, we would hear the surf pounding the beach. I was, oddly, comforted.
In the Fall in Oregon, it is a phenomenon that folks eagerly long for the return of the winter rains, which, months later, they will be vehemently cursing. The sound of the rain on the roof is a soporific that induces comfort and contentment. The return of the rain brings the best night of sleep an Oregonian can have.
Similarly, in Wyoming, the wind is the common factor of existence, just as the rain is in Oregon. The sound of trees shuddering in the wind, the rattle of shakes and roof tiles, and the alto keen of the wind passing, are the comforting notes of sleep. A quiet night is viewed suspiciously, an unnatural anomaly.
Over the years, I have become an Oregonian, leaving the high plains world view behind in exchange for the liberal/GDI attitude of western Oregon. Admittedly, I still scoff at the panic induced here by a half an inch of snow and am most comfortable when the closest human being is at least a mile away. That aside, I appreciate the many gradations of precipitation that a true Oregonian recognizes. I no longer expect a white Christmas. I enjoy someone else pouring my gas. And yes, I sleep best the first night that Fall returns and rain patters on the roof. It is all about what you are used to. Once, while crossing Nebraska, an old cowboy asked us where we were from. When we said Oregon, he replied that he could never live there, “too many trees,” he said.
I have not, however, totally forsaken my birthright. A child of the West, I am still lulled by the wind at night, and so it is that, as the bus rocks in the wind, I feel comforted. Just like the sound of rain on the roof, the wind is the sound of home, trees and all.

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