But there is a natural complex of greed, a provision for appetite, that brings men and earth to mutuality. Manifested by the weather, it sometimes puts us out of doors to understand real fortitude. Instead of easing on toward January, December begins to tug and roar. It snows all day and there are north winds of from thirty to forty miles an hour driving the snow against our houses, suggesting an extra struggle we might not be quite ready for. Then it warms up to 2 or 4 degrees above freezing, and the following morning begins with a cold rain and sleet falling down with hissing, disheartening force. The temperature drops. The sleet turns to snow, driving in violently from the north, hitting the trees like bullets. The sky closes in. There is no horizon. The wind swirls. Trees rock and bend. This is a storm with a great rush of savagery, setting wild, grim traps for the unprotected. “Now,” it says, “I have you. Try some adventures in this.” There is ice or cemented snow along the tree trunks in the direction of the storm, so that by sight and feel I know the wind is from the northeast quarter, without need of instruments. My hand tells me where the present power is coming from. When the snow and wind let up a little, I head for the shore and find signs down, gutters yanked out, and telegraph wires dangling across the road. Salt water ahead of me is churning, tossing white spume against the open shore, while the wind seethes, whines, and howls with growing intensity. The feeling of conflict is everywhere around me--a hurling and letting go, a bend and give, a clash, a holding against insufferable strain. The sand on the upper beach is whipped into stinging strength. The sea is almost boiling, its racing, conflicting edges spray-lined. On top of an exceptionally high tide, great waves run in over a sheltered inlet, sending their combers farther toward the land. All points of contact and withdrawal, rise and fall, seem to be concentrated in this monumental turbulence, a force that is almost uncontained. Is it a replica in violence of the normally unseen stresses and strains lying under a peaceful season, or a life? Our bodies are made of air and salt water, in their components of hydrogen and oxygen, carbon and nitrogen. A storm should be our organic companion. But this cold screaming fury makes me take refuge behind a wall. Man may have overcome the elements, but not his elemental frailty. Out over the gray and white waters, hovering against the wind in an almost idle way, are several herring gulls. And, at the mouth of the inlet, riding calmly on the roaring, running tide, facing up against a thirty-five-mile-an-hour wind, is a loon--close-reefed, well fitted in all respects to weather the worst. _Two Encounters_