Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, July 10, 1994                   TAG: 9407290019
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: C2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CAMPERS ALWAYS FIRST TO FEEL THE WINDS OF CHANGE

I've always liked a wind when I'm camping, especially when I've set a tent in a wild area, away from other people. The wind then becomes a moving, vocal part of the experience.

Wind can be a companion to a camper, a helpmate for a sailor, but it can be a problem for other outdoorsmen. It is the enemy of hunters and wildlife watchers. It sets wildlife on edge, making them spooky because it erodes their defenses of sight, scent and hearing.

Too much wind can be a fisherman's foe, too, wrapping a back cast around the neck of a fly caster and rudely pushing a boat over the very spot that holds bass.

But a camper can welcome the wind. It cools in the summer and it makes a fire appreciated in cold weather. It sings to you in the night, sometimes soothingly, sometimes hauntingly, causing you to pull your sleeping bag tighter around your neck. It blows away the dull haze that can shroud the Appalachians in July, replacing it with bright, mountain air, blue skies and fluffy white clouds.

Part of the joy of camping is the feeling you are challenging nature with bare necessities, a bit of canvas and ingenuity against the elements. Wind makes the encounter more personal.

Some people are gregarious campers, who like to have their tent ropes crisscross with the ropes of other campers. They park their RVs in groups like wildebeest resting near a water hole. That's all right. They have their fun. They really don't need the wind.

But I think camping is best done away from congestion, where you fold harmonically into the tall oaks and listen to the wind singing in their crowns at night and hear the song of the wood thrush in the morning. You know then the natural world is free and turning, and you are a pretty insignificant part of it.

On this particular night, we were getting large doses of wind, probably because somewhere beyond the mountain we occupied high pressure was bumping into low, like a couple of bullies shoving each other.

I got up in the middle of the night, something you tend to do more often as you grow older, and briefly watched the wind in the oaks. Their trunks were braced against its power, but the crowns moved against the sky, like paint brushes that were punctuating the blackness with stars.

The oaks have survived years of winds, which is a major statement of their strength, but there is something a few ridges to the northeast that could do them in, at least the old ones that stand tall against the night sky. It is the gypsy moth.

These destructive insects gain a few miles of terrain toward this camping spot every year, and chances are the time will come when they steal our shade and dump excrement on our campsite. Then the wind will moan rather than sing. It is a disheartening thought.

Chestnuts once stood here and were replaced by oaks, and most likely the oaks will become a maple forest.

I'm not certain all of this is evolution is going in the correct direction, but it seems trying to change it would be like trying to alter the course of the wind.