Northern Winds and Whistling Pines

The northern winds have found their home

High above the timber line

But you and I were born to roam,

To wander through the whistling pines

This refrain, from the opening lines of Harper Simon’s Shooting Star, has been pulsing through my brain, stuck on loop, for days.

Its cadence is superbly matched to its imagery. A downward-sloping rhythm falls from lofty heights to settle on the ground: each line begins with an upbeat and ends in a downbeat. The traditionally guttural consonant, mm or nn, creates phonetic weight that pulls the cadence downwards. Alongside this moving imagery is a dropping melody: pretty and simple, its lilting beat slowly descends through notes as the cadence carries the imagery from mountaintop to forest floor.

It is the idea of movement, or lack thereof, in the passage that grips me. Everything in this passage is in motion or has, significantly, stopped moving. Winds, the very epitome of change and movement, of transient displacement, have found a home – a place of roots and a place of stability. They have stopped their intrinsic motion for unnatural permanence.

Conversely, below the timber line where we expect to find consistency, stability and immobility in the forest’s trees, we roam and wander. We are born to indecision and move with passivity so at odds with a forest’s endurance and strength that the whole endeavor is left sad, deflated and disappointed.

The winds have found roots but the displaced trees whistle with movement.

It is, of course, a metaphor for a relationship. In a thing of supposed support and stability, you ostensibly find yourself adrift and directionless. The winds may stop and find a home, but you, surrounded with the means to settle yourself, continue aimlessly.

The dichotomy of such opposites is the gem of this passage. Caught between steadiness and restlessness the verse moves me. Over the past days it has tucked itself into my life, finding permanence in an ever-shifting mind.

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