The winds, the rain, the snow and even the birds, these peoples of the azure, tint our dispositions of mind and dictate our daily lives. According to his fearsrecent regrets, our collaborator Monique Durand opens up a few sections of skies, from here and elsewhere, where the wind of the days and the lightning of the birds pass. First of eight articles.
Baie-Sainte-Catherine–Tadoussac ferry, January 29. White sun, the landscape petrified with cold — 40 degrees on the clock. The St. Lawrence is made of pewter, and the Saguenay River, an overturned old silver coffee pot. The mountains of the fjord are grayish, speckled with milk. A light wind shakes the tops of the spruce trees. The whole landscape is frozen in a gradation going from the white of the snow to the black of the bird that I observe, a crow, planted at the end of the mast of the Jos-Deschenes II. She is neither racy nor colorful, a little despised because too common across the globe, her hoarse cry like an old car horn. But its ebony color makes the sky bluer, the snow whiter. And, in this second, gray grayer.
“I would like to say a word about Nature. So begins a book by the famous naturalist Henry David Thoreau. The series you will read this summer would like, modestly, to say a word about the winds, the sun and the rain. A word about the variations in the weather, modulating those of our moods, influencing our physical and psychological health. “Is the number of foggy days in his life irrelevant? asks Thoreau. We are the children of landscapes and climates, sculpted by the skies in which we infuse.
Even in this XXIe century, the winds remain something of a mystery. “They sleep in their deep prisons”, wrote the Portuguese poet Camões in the XVIe century. Unpredictable flow that can go “from the gust to the zephyr”, in the words of historian Alain Corbin, specialist in sensitivities.
The André Malraux museum in Le Havre, in the north of France, presented an exhibition a few months ago entitled The wind. That which cannot be painted. Fascinating history of its representation. During Antiquity, it was embodied in divinities and took on human forms. “Aeolus” and “Boreas”, words of Greek origin, have remained in our vocabulary. Up to more contemporary visions. Claude Monet painted in the open air, on the motif, hair disheveled by the breeze at Belle-Île-en-Mer, off the coast of Brittany. In Tribute to Rosa LuxemburgJean Paul Riopelle makes the wind windier than nature in the wing movements of the geese he traces.
Back to the Jos-Deschenes II. I lowered my pilot seat. I am totally given to the sky crossed by quilted layers and cottony benches. The crow did not flinch, indifferent to the Siberian cold. The whole decor shivers, not her, stoic at the end of the mast, seeming to defy the climate.
How can we speak of skies without speaking of their winged choirs? “The bird embodies a bridge between the real and the imaginary, says the author Jean-Yves Barnagaud, its evocative power is universal. It represents the “discreet triumph of the savage in the city”. For the amateur ornithologist Jean-Noël Rieffel, bird watching is a real school of observation. “They give us back time as an offering, teaching us silence, patience, questioning us about our relationship to time, the fragility of our existence. »
A little as if our lives on screens wanted a breath of fresh air, bird tourism is experiencing a real craze. Between the various bird festivals, that of Rimouski in the spring, that of the Côte-Nord in the fall, and other “sound paths” and “ornithological challenges” offered in national parks, Quebecers are infatuated with vertebrates feathered. Magazine subscriptions QuebecBirds jumped 20% in 2022! And it shouldn’t just be seen as the COVID effect!
But it’s not just the birds that are people of the air. There are those humans who inhabit the windy immensities, often established near the seas. Like at Tête-à-la-Baleine, on this Lower North Shore lost in the confines of maritime Quebec. Or in the Faroe Islands, pebbles lost in the North Atlantic, where it rains three quarters of the year. It will be discussed this summer.
THE Jos-Deschenes II makes its way through the soup of floating ice that scrapes and squeaks. From the seat I’m harnessed to, I can feel the currents roar and the powerful confluence of river and river waters pulsing beneath our ferry.
“At the end of the eighteenthe century has intensified the individual’s sensitivity to meteorological phenomena,” says historian Alain Corbin. Gradually developed what he calls a meteorological self. “The vagaries of the self reflect the vagaries of the sky,” he explains. The weather affects our moods, low morale or joy. Affects libido, exacerbated by heat. Sunlight allows the body to secrete serotonin, a neuromodulator involved in regulating behavior and temperament. And then, it’s not an urban legend, nails and hair grow faster when it’s hot! The weather also influences our concentration. According to meteorologist and author Louis Bodin, the best temperature to focus our attention would be 17 degrees. The wind would promote insomnia, migraine and stroke, reports the Top Health site. Two funny things: according to researchers, when the weather is nice, tips are more generous! And when it rains, the right is more likely to win than the left!
Even birds affect our indoor climates. Ornithologist Rieffel reports on a study by biologists at Carleton University, Ottawa, establishing a correlation between bird song and stress. “Patients subjected to natural sounds, such as birdsong, have better general health. To varying degrees, we are all weather-sensitive, each based on our body type, genetic background and, dare I say it, geographic history.
THE Jos-Deschenes II is still progressing on the Saguenay River. The eastern shore is approaching. Curled up in my heated cockpit, I take advantage of these last moments of beneficial torpor, before resuming my icy journey. The crow has not moved, perched at the end of the mast.
In the ancient world, humans read in the sky the fate that awaited them. Divination by observing the flight of birds was widely practiced. In Greece, the word ornis (bird) also meant omen. With the development of science, humans have gone “from invocations to forecasts”, assures Alain Corbin, ceasing to believe in divine intervention to explain atmospheric palpitations. The sky has become secularized, in a way.
Today, the slightest celestial upheavals are analysed, recorded by satellites equipped with sophisticated sensors and probes on the nose of aircraft. Real-time weather is available on our phones. TV channels specialize in forecasting. The predictive reliability reaches 15 days, against 8 days twenty years ago. “These new data have abolished the surprise effect”, notes Alain Corbin. Yet, yet… Our umbrellas are still often out of step with the rain; the first snow seizes us again; storms, tornadoes, deluges sometimes take us by surprise. Weather is not an exact science. ” […] we cannot define the speeds and positions of each particle of the atmosphere, nor even each mass of air or each cloud, nor their temperature, humidity and that of the ground and the oceans, ”explains Ville en vert on its site. “In short, there is too much data. “They’ll send us whatever they want,” said my old neighbor from the Gaspé with a shrug of the shoulders, finishing in the high wind, on a staircase, the slow cooking of his life.
The ferry has docked. The crow flew away. Rieffel’s words come back to me: “We are birds of passage, with the duty to capture fragments of the brilliance of this world that we cross in haste. » Vehicles move towards the exit of the Jos-Deschenes II in wisps of pale smoke. A sailor with a frozen mustache greets me. Head for my northern skies. My beauty.