Wind

In the desert, the full force of wind gusts hit you, or your house, and it feels like a blow from a hard object. It carries dust, sand, gravel, and anything else not secured well enough such as lawn furniture and shingles. It is a huge part of your life--you can't ignore it, inside or out, and the morning after a windy night everyone is cranky because they spent the night listening to a hurricane instead of sleeping.

Since we moved, we don't miss the wind. Spring tends to be windy here--as it also is in the Eastern Sierra, where I lived for most of the last two decades. But the wind here is in the treetops. Wind in a forest is a completely different thing than wind in the desert. You worry about a tree falling on your house instead of your house falling down.