What is wind?
Right now, I'm watching the northerlies tear through El Cuyo, Yucatán, at 38 mph. From our rental at Costa Chido, I can see pro kiteboarders slicing through what looks like hurricane conditions while palm fronds bend completely sideways. It's beautifully apocalyptic.
We've got dark skies, wild seas, and a constant, raw power that has me wondering: What is wind?
What is wind?
My journey of documenting extreme environments began after meeting my husband. His experience in the elite special forces woke up this city girl to new dimensions of understanding nature's raw power.
Between filming in harsh, remote locations and chasing experiences across continents, it's interesting that nothing has humbled me quite like wind.
We think we understand it because we feel it on our face. But wind remains the original trickster god.
That wind out there, which seems to be close to a gale, tells different stories to different people.
For the kiteboarders, it's pure life.
For local fishermen whose boats remain tied to shore for today, it hints at death. Their families have known through generations that wind draws the line between feast and famine, between safe return and tragedy.
Modern sailing tries to reduce this complexity to numbers on instruments. Direction, speed, gusts. Clean, clinical data.
But ask any sage sailor what wind really is. It's the breath of the world which carries stories of the lands it passed through. A constant companion. A temperamental friend. A stern teacher.
While we wait here in El Cuyo until mid-February 2025 for a deal to close (one that will finally fund our transition to life at sea) there's little else to do. Beach day is postponed.
So, I'm going to do something definably me: sit in this little Mexican beach village and consult ancient Chinese divination.
The I Ching, or Book of Changes, has become my companion in contemplating these forces of nature. Dating back over three thousand years, it stands as one of humanity's oldest systems of understanding the elements that shape our world.
Eight fundamental forces form the I Ching's foundation, represented by trigrams - three solid or broken lines stacked together. These trigrams embody heaven, earth, thunder, water, mountain, lake, fire, and wind.
Combined, they create 64 hexagrams, each describing a different state of change and transformation.
Wind, shown in the trigram Xun, appears as two solid lines with a broken line beneath them. Like gentle winds flowing under a stable sky. This simple visual captures wind's essence: a force flowing through gaps, finding openings, penetrating and influencing through sheer persistence.
When wind's trigram meets others in the I Ching, deeper truths emerge. In Hexagram 37, wind appears above fire, creating a perfect metaphor for subtle leadership. Wind guides fire's rising energy without suppressing it, spreading warmth throughout a household.
This interaction reveals wind's true power: the ability to influence through gentle persistence rather than force. Much like wind distributing fire's warmth through a home, skilled sailors learn to channel wind's energy rather than fight against it.
Every culture has wrestled with wind's essence.
The Greeks gave us their Anemoi, the gods of the wind.
The Norse sailors, their god of gale and breeze.
Yet wind transcends our definitions. The breath of a universe moves to its own rhythm, shaping humans and landscapes since before we had words to name it. Ancient mariners learned to read the invisible. Wind moves without permission or apology. The most successful sailors develop an instinct for reading signs, understanding both when to unfurl their sails and when to seek shelter.
At it's core, wind teaches us about our place in the universe.
Through its invisible currents, it carried explorers to new worlds and guided them home again. Most profoundly, it shows us how wisdom grows from moving with nature's forces rather than attempting to master them.
In the simplicity of today, I honor the wind - the ancient reminder that sometimes the greatest wisdom lies in simply paying attention to what moves us.
