Last week I finished up an eight-week weather course through the Canadian Power and Sail Squadron.  It laid down the basics of ‘why weather happens’ and then delved into the specifics of pressure systems, the reading and interpretation of surface analysis charts, and – most importantly to sailors – how to interpret and then forecast weather based on the current local conditions.  Pretty handy, not just if you’re a sailor but if you spend any time outside at all.

A good deal of the info was new to me, even though my own father was teaching the course.  Don’t get me wrong – he was very generous in giving us the in’s and out’s of weather while we were growing up.  We spent a lot of time as a family out skiing, camping, canoeing, sailing, and just generally being outside, sometimes for weeks at a time.  Understanding weather – particularly having the ability to forecast based on current conditions without the aid of analysis charts – can at best be a lifesaver, or at the very least be convenient; when to go or stay, where to go, when to take precautions (like reduce sail or head for shore), where best to set camp or lay anchor, etc., etc.  My Dad was very good about explaining the generalities to us (we were just kids after all), but the finer points he kept to himself (wisely, I think, for trying to grasp the finer points of weather behaviour can turn even the sharpest minds inside out, let alone a six-year-old).  But what he did give me as a kid didn’t really stick, I’ll admit.  By the time I sat down for the first of these classes, most of what my father had shared had become vagaries of memory, dulled by time and lack of use.

Taking the course (and there-by casting light on my ignorance) reinvigorated that cynical and perhaps nostalgiac part of me that thinks most people – particularly urban people – are out of touch with Reality.  Notice that I capitalized that.  That means I think it’s important.

I’m usually of the point of view (depending upon my mood) that people are ultimately natural creatures, meaning that we emerge from, depend upon, and are defined by our immediate natural environments, or Reality.  Indeed we have the excellent capacity for modifying those environments for our imagined benefit, but all of that can be stripped away and ultimately the ‘natural’ world has the final say.  Seeing things in this way, I resolve that people (individuals and communities) should endeavor to sufficiently understand how their immediate environment works and, hopefully, discern what our place is in it.  The ultimate perspective that comes from this is one of integration with interdependence between ourselves and Reality.  For me this endeavor includes science but also a good measure of ‘gut’ understanding based on experience, usually called ‘local’ or ‘traditional’ knowledge.  Weather figures prominently, naturally.

Not that I’m a good model for this effort (actually I’m ‘piss poor’, as my Dad would say), but I still think it necessary.  Sometimes.  I need to be reminded.  This weather course helped, but it had been a while since the last reminder, which came from an unexpected source.

We have a painting stashed in our basement that a friend of Krista’s sister had painted years ago.  We ended up with it somehow.  It was even more of a bargain since it’s double-sided: on one side is a cool image of a couple among leaves done in shades of blue; on the other side is a collage-type mash-up of seemingly random images and phrases in very bright colors.  When we lived in an apartment (years ago) we used to have the ‘couple among leaves’ image hanging up in the living room, but we never gave much thought to the backside until one New Year’s Eve, after more than a few sangrias and glasses of wine, we flipped it over and dissected the possible meanings with a bunch of friends.  It turned out to be pretty darned insightful. [I’ll take a pic of the painting and post it later].

What emerged to me was the painter’s attempt to frame Western culture’s current separation from and objectification, rarification (and even abstraction) of the natural world through technology and empirical analysis.  He used a lot of charts, expressions in percentages, common turns of phrase that reveal this separation to be what it is now: absurd, complete, and, sadly, fearful.  At least that’s what I saw.

One phrase stuck with me – “Shelter from the rain.”  It’s a common enough phrase and is actually sensible (it’s usually in one’s best interest to stay dry, no matter where you are, unless of course you’re bathing).  In the context of the painting, however, it makes the suggestion that we are afraid of the rain, which is – I think – true.  People tend to run and hide from the rain.  We invest in ways to ‘protect’ ourselves from the rain, as if it were an enemy bent on our ruin.  Furthermore, the painting suggests (to me, at least) that our fear of the rain is actually and ironically irrational, for all our culture’s rational posturing.  When considered, if only for a second, it’s clear that rain, for us in the West, is at worst an inconvenience, and only because it flattens our hair or ruins our makeup or wets our books and papers.  I suppose the worst a normal rain can do is damage the electronics we’ve come to depend upon so much if they’re left exposed, but even then we’re often within arm’s length of shelter of some kind and so rain poses no real threat to the typical urban dweller (which defines the vast majority of modern Westerners).

Now, yes, torrential rain can cause a massive amount of damage (I grew up in southern Manitoba after all, so I’m familiar with floods), but the damage allowed by floods is only indicative (in my mind) of the ignorance we are in with respect to our immediate natural environment.  (As a note: Winnipeg built its floodway a long time ago – despite a great deal of opposition, I must add – at great expense and it has paid for itself many times over.)  I wasn’t considering extremes of weather, and I don’t think the painter was either.  However, even examples of extreme weather should show us that the better we understand Reality, the better we can not only deal with it but actually work with it.  Hundreds of examples exist (the Winnipeg Floodway being one, but I’m sure you can think of many others).  But I am digressing.  The point is that we don’t understand our weather, and it’s a simple truth that we fear the things we don’t understand.

The argument can be made that most of us actually don’t need to understand the weather since most of the devices that we’ve made commonplace in our lives serve to make weather irrelevant.  This could be said for any of the natural systems; we don’t depend on them anymore.  We can grow our food anywhere if need be, and our transportation and communications systems are largely independent of natural conditions.  Money – the basis of our society – has become figurative and therefore the movement of it is no longer restricted by the unfortunate inconveniences of Reality.  Nature remains, then, as a place that is other, outside, something to be ‘restored’ and ‘preserved’ (by us in our technical wisdom), explicitly so that we can ‘enjoy’ it.  We do not need, then, to understand it in any significant way because we are no longer related to it and it, us.  Weather, specifically, is an inconvenience to our pleasures for which we must compensate with sunscreen, rain tires, air conditioning, and so on.

This argument – that concludes we do not need to understand weather, which I think is a presupposition to most common actions, where I mean that while we likely take weather into account, we do not need to understand weather before making decisions – itself presupposes at least a couple of premises that are, I think, untrue: first, that the devices that ‘protect’ us from the weather will endure; second, that we are as separate from natural systems such as weather as our devices make us feel.  The veil, you might call it, between us and Reality is much thinner than we may like to think.  All it takes is a simple power outage to help us remember; I’m thinking here of the blackout in Toronto a couple of years ago – the comments made by Torontonians about that experience seemed hysterical to us here in Nothern Ontario.  One of the reasons I like living in Northern Ontario so much is because the people here generally are more in tune with their natural surroundings and appreciate them in a more, shall I say, ‘realistic’ way than those from urban centres.  One reason for this I think is that the weather here is typically extreme enough that we need to take more account for it in our day-to-day activities than someone in a more urban setting, particuarly during the winter.  Another reason is that for a long time the industries upon which our economy has depended were situated firmly in that Reality, and so an affinity for those natural systems arose as a matter of course.  But foremost I think the reason that Northern Ontarians have a more realistic perpective is that the recreational activities in which we engage – outdoor activities, but primarily hunting and fishing – rely greatly on traditional methods and environmental systems knowledge.  Success in these sports (and livelihoods in many cases) depends on that knowledge, and that knowledge naturally engenders that realistic perspective of integration and interdependence, and that perspective then spreads through the community, even to those who don’t actually engage in those activities, but obviously will be strongest in those who do.

Ultimately (this post has gone on long enough), I think a person can lead a sufficiently happy life without understanding weather in the least.  But it would be in my estimation as sufficiently happy a life as that of a hamster, or some other domesticated pet that remains sheltered from a world that has become hostile to it, by the sad virtue of its domestication.