Elements of the Wind

am not a fan of those who say, "There are two types of people: those who love cell phones, and those who hate cell phones." Another example: "There are two kinds of people: those who will only drink bottled water, and those who think bottled water is a waste." The variations are endless, although endlessly similar, and I find this inclination to divide humanity into two clear-cut groups limiting, naive, absurd. So perhaps I am saying that there are two types of people: those who divide other people into simplistic groups, and those who do not. And perhaps there are two further types of people: those who admire this sort of breakdown, and those who do not. I can see, I suppose, the attraction of this remedial math. Simplicity is seductive, clarity is seductive. I am, on occasion, seduced by each. Even so, such superficial division seems, in the end, dismissible. That being said, I think it may be possible to say there are two types of people: those who love wind, and those who hate it. Being firmly ensconced in the former group, enduringly in love with wind, it came as a shock to me, fairly deeply into my adulthood, to learn that not everyone shared this affection. "I hate wind." These words were uttered by an acquaintance as we cruised at a leisurely pace on her pontoon boat along the Seneca River in central New York. It was a merely breezy not windy spring afternoon, a weekday, and aside from the occasional heron or gull, the river was not crowded. Her words weren't spat with hostility exactly, but were said with considerable crankiness under the assumption, I think, that her passengers implicitly agreed with her. This was the first time I had ever heard anyone acknowledge a quarrel