by Mica Hart
On Wednesday, November 9, I made my way across from the Ouray School gym building to the main building. I was crossing the east to west wind channel that 8th street had become. My hair whipped around me, my hood ballooned up like a parachute, and I raced as fast as I could across the pavement to get to safety. Right as I was about to enter the building, I saw a ptarmigan!
For context, these are chicken sized birds that live in the arctic or tundra, and they prefer high altitudes where it is very dry. They definitely do not fly down to Ouray on purpose. One high school student was delighted to see this bird, which she had never seen before, and “has never seen a bird as cute”, despite being “terrified of birds.”
The novelty of this sighting was not the only joyous, unique event to happen during the wind storm with 60 mile an hour gusts.
“The littles were taking their coats and throwing them up in the air and they were sticking to the fence” during recess, said high school counselor Ted Fellin. Counselor Jaceson Cole also saw this happen, and thought “it was a really cool experiment” for the elementary kids to do.
The same little kids that were throwing their coats up in the air so that they would be blown into the fence also had many stories about the wind. Near 1st grader Bracken’s house, a fallen tree “was so big,” he said, “my sister and I had to do teamwork to move it!”
Bracken’s classmate Owen said his family “was driving by the hot springs and saw a really big tree and the wind was so strong that it tilted and then it fell.”
From blown over recycling bins to road closures to trees being blown down, wind storms like this one always come with a bit of fear and annoyance, but they also bring delightful and wondrous moments. When the wind of life is blowing very hard, remember to exclaim over rarely seen birds out of place and to drag your friends along to laugh with you.