Short Takes #6: Mark Spragg - In Wyoming, Ann Daum - Those Who Stay and Those Who Go

Both of these pieces were unexpectedly connected.  Mark Spragg's dealt with the wind in Wyoming and Ann Daum's dealt with wind in South Dakota, neighbors geographically and thematically.  Both essays don't reveal the "I" until about halfway through.  I see Spragg's essay as less forgiving to the Plains compared to Daum's.  The short break from the wind has its brightness dimmed by the looming shadow of the wind's return, and I see this as an allegory to life's hardships.  The momentary breaks we get amidst our toil ("We remember we are serfs.  We know the lord is only absent, not dethroned") are dulled in their excitement by the "big wind out there, on its way home to our high plains."  Both writers refer to the way people, animals, and plants all become used to the wind and live their whole lives slanted, so that when the wind stops, they still lean instinctively.  This goes along with Spragg's previously-discussed claim a little more obviously, but in Daum's piece it is more ambiguous.  Jackie's bruises are ever present as long as she lives in Murdo, even "when the wind stops."  Daum and Spragg both highlight the constancy of suffering, although they both show joy in different ways.