The Flight Carried by the Wind

A Passage Above the Open Countryside

About This Story

The Flight Carried by the Wind is a work of fiction set entirely in motion above the land. It contains no characters and no plot. The narration follows the wind from one morning to the next, beginning over fields and hedgerows and continuing across a river, a lake, a city, a mountain range and an arid plain. Attention rests on what can be seen at each stage, including field boundaries, water, rooftops, cloud and stone. The light changes gradually from morning through dusk and darkness to a second morning. The pace is slow, observational and evenly kept. The story suits readers who prefer stillness and detail to event.

The Land Moving Slowly Below

The land below moves slowly, one field passing beneath another. Green gives way to the brown of turned earth, still holding the cold of the morning. Hedgerows mark the boundaries, each line drawn long ago and kept ever since, and the roads between them run grey and empty at this early hour.

A farm sits low against the ground, its buildings set close together. The largest roof catches the light as it passes and holds it for a moment before the farmstead falls back into the wider pattern of the fields. Where two roads meet, a cluster of trees has grown over many years, its canopy dense enough to cast a shadow of its own.

Crows cross a freshly harrowed field, scattering, gathering and scattering again. A tractor follows its line to the far edge, turns, and begins the next line in the opposite direction. From this height the engine makes no sound. Only the dust can be seen, lifted for a moment and then dispersed by the wind.

In the corner of a larger field, an orchard stands in uneven rows, its branches bare against the sky. Beyond it a stream appears between the grasses as a thin brightness, disappears beneath the willows, and appears again. It widens by degrees into a river. Cattle stand at the water’s edge, so still that they read as part of the ground until one shifts its weight. A stone bridge carries a road across a narrow point, and its arches are reflected in the water with a clarity that matches the stone.

Willows line a long bend where the river slows and turns. Their branches trail in the direction of the current, not quite touching it, and where they do graze the surface, small ripples travel downstream and dissolve before reaching the far bank. The river takes in each interruption and continues as before. Beneath the central arch of the bridge the water narrows and quickens for a moment, then spreads out again into the slower movement beyond.

The wind carries all of this forward without effort. Nothing ends abruptly. Each field opens into the next through a gate or a gap in the hedge, and each change arrives slowly enough to be watched from beginning to end. The light belongs to mid-morning, neither early nor full, and it lays the shadows of the hedgerows across the grass in long, even bands.

Further on, the river loses its banks and spreads into open water. Reeds stand close together at the margin, their seed heads breaking apart in the air. The far shore does not approach quickly, and the sky takes up more of the view than the land does. A cloud crosses the surface, its shadow arriving before it, and the water beneath darkens and then clears again.

Then the trees on the far side become distinct, a long row set back from the shore, and the land begins again. The fields are still close beneath, and the wind is in no hurry to leave them.

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