It doesn't snow much where we live but a little cold white stuff falls every winter. This season started with a long spell of apparent global warming with sunny days well into mid December. But last Sunday there were a couple of inches of fluffy new snow on the deck when we went to bed. The next morning there was almost 9 inches. After crawling out of bed I hurried to get warm clothes on, turned up the heater, pushed on the coffee brewer and stepped over to the window to watch our cars being slowly buried in drifting snow.
Our hummingbird feeder was covered by Monday morning.
As I watched the snow falling the house suddenly became silent. The refrigerator and everything else electric stopped. After some groggy curse words I went to the mud room and dug out the propane camp stove and reached under the sink for the camp coffee setup. Then I moved the water and ground beans from the coffee maker which was now just as useless as:
- our broadband access,
- telephones,
- lighting,
- satellite television,
- refrigerator,
- water well and
- central heating.
I went through my usual “first outage” ritual, berating myself for not buying a propane powered generator.
Short outages are fun. The snow is beautiful. We listen to our community radio station, read by candle light and snuggle up happily around our propane stove. I have less pleasant memories of long outages:
- Days without a shower or shave;
- Hiking through the snow to meet my sister who has driven to the edge of the plowed road to bring us food and water;
- Almost falling into the ditch behind our house while trying to snag a bucket of water for toilet flushing;
- Losing several pounds of fresh frozen wild Alaskan salmon as the refrigerator slowly lost its cool;
- Paying a local heavy equipment operator $75 to scrape the snow and much of the gravel from our driveway.
A couple of hours into the last outage we got the happy news that our neighbors were driving up from the Bay Area and were going to visit Costco on the way. By 3:00 that afternoon they had arrived with water, salami and wine. We walked to their house through the snow and gathered around the wood fire in the late afternoon. We made a toast to the Pacific Gas and Electric workers when the power came back on at 4:16 PM.
As I write this a week later, the snow is mostly gone and rain is predicted all through next week.
