US Election Day Is Always A Hurricane

But there's never been a storm yet that didn't pass

"Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by."

Christina Rossetti’s Who Has Seen the Wind? is often interpreted as a meditation on unseen forces and the nature of faith or belief. The poem suggests that some of the most powerful forces in our lives, like the wind—and by extension, concepts like faith, love, and even change—are invisible, but their presence is unmistakably seen and felt in the way they shape the world around us.

The rustling leaves and bending trees stand - real and alive - as metaphors for how we experience things indirectly, through their effects rather than direct sight. In a spiritual or philosophical sense, the poem speaks to the mystery of life’s unseen influences, evoking both wonder and humility in the face of things we can’t fully understand or control.

To me the Jack Pine is the ultimate Canadian manifestation of Rossetti’s poem.

The Jack Pine is a well-known oil painting by Canadian artist Tom Thomson. A representation of the most broadly distributed pine species in Canada, it is considered an iconic image of the country's landscape, and is one of the country's most widely recognized and reproduced artworks.

The Jack Pine is a vivid portrayal of resilience against the forces of nature, capturing the essence of wind, change, and endurance. The painting centers on a solitary jack pine, standing tall and defiant on the edge of a rugged landscape.

Political Wind

Even in November, wind is just part of the background noise of life—a little bluster, a little sway, nothing that truly unsettles. It stirs the trees, scatters a few leaves, maybe makes us pull our coats a bit tighter, but at the end of the day, it mostly comes and goes without really touching us.

If we know one thing in Nova Scotia, we know about wind. We know once in a while the wind arrives with real force, a true fury that demands our attention and actually changes the landscape. And then it’s gone. My memories are filled with the sense of community and care that emerges and lingers in the calm after the storm.

These rare gusts—the storms, hurricanes, the ones that uproot trees and rearrange lives—are the exceptions. They’re reminders that for all its bluster, and power, and that power the wind wields, we’re still left the same at heart — hopeful, human, helping each other put things back together. The wind can blow. But it doesn’t change us.

And maybe politics, with all its noise and rattling branches, is much the same. It’s mostly just passing wind, often stirring up more leaves than consequence. Real change, the kind that transforms lives and alters landscapes, comes from inside us not from the wind of election results.

Today is no fun. It’s the eye of the storm. The worst kind of political wind — blustering and blowing for months now. The simplicity of Rossetti’s poetic language allows readers of all ages to grasp this mystery. It just seems to me, as get older our relationship with the wind changes. The wind attracts more and more of our attention. Though I've sailed all my life, today the wind rattles me. It mixes me up. I long for calm and peaceful days.

On this US election day, we may sense a deeper, almost existential contemplation on how invisible forces move us, how the wind rattles us, whether emotional, spiritual, or even political.

People fret about the Democrats getting in, and others worry about the Republicans. Everyone at some level must wonder about Donald Trump—but let’s be honest, we’ve had both over the years, and for most of us, life hasn’t changed as much as the weather. The day-to-day grind, the things that really matter—our families, our communities, our work—seem more affected by a stiff breeze than by who’s in office. Here’s to keeping perspective: may this election pass like a gust of wind, stirring up a lot of noise but leaving us standing right where we are.

Everyone at some level must wonder about Donald Trump. Even his biggest supporters must sense a certain windiness to him. I imagine Trump as a carnival barker coming through town in autumn, in a wind-weathered and desperate old-time medicine show.

He’s hawking bottles of Trump’s Elixir—"Cures what ails ya, makes America greater, restores hair, vitality, and bank accounts!" The crowd’s a mix of skeptics, true believers, and the simply curious with nothing else to do, all drawn in by his outsized presence and endless confidence. His pitch? Loud, proud, and a little baffling, somehow managing to leave folks entertained, amused, and vaguely concerned all at once. You don’t know if you’re supposed to laugh, cheer, or hide your wallet, but you can’t quite look away. Like any good carnival act, you’re left wondering what’s real, what’s show.

Ultimately, the political wind can’t change who we are. Even the worst, most howling gusts pass as quickly as they come, leaving us to carry on. Life resumes its rhythm, steady and undeterred. Like the jack pines clinging to a rocky shore, bent but never broken, we endure, rooted in our true nature. Storms may bend us, rattle us, maybe even strip a few leaves, but it’s winter coming anyway, they can’t uproot us all. And when the wind of politics dies down, we’re still standing, resilient as ever, grounded in the simple strength of being who we are.