Aftermath thoughts in the prison of ice

musing while waiting for power to be restored

Muir Hut in the Sierra Nevada, PCT 2017

I heard a massive boom followed by bright electrical light into the sky that lit up the interior of my home. As I rushed to the window, a powerline, coated in ice that had been building up for days, landed in a large Douglas fir and was on fire. All nearby residents called 911. No one was dispatched, and the fire dwindled — all emergency services were overloaded due to the high amounts of damage, wrecks, and outages. My lights flickered, then went dim and eventually shut off. I scrounged for candles while holding my baby and shushing my dog — as my neighborhood street erupted in a brief chaos. We were on day 4 of being homebound in a prison of ice.

Feeling foolish for not being prepared for this moment, I frantically looked for a stash of candles and my blessed LuminAid solar lamp — that I had kept in a window to keep a charge. I folded up bits of tin foil and set candles in safe spots around the house in the growing darkness and lit them. The mac and cheese I was cooking on the stove slowly moved from a boil to stillness — thankfully, cooked! Baby and I sat in the candlelight eating the mac and cheese and feeling the coldness creep into the house. I cooed soothing words to my baby — as he was able to feel my distress. Mother duties never end and never stop, even in a power outage. We did our night routine as best we could and climbed into the still-warm loft of the house, snuggled under woolen blankets. My gratitude for working so hard to breastfeed and persist despite all my struggles with it was immense. Knowing I could provide that nourishing milk for my baby when there wasn’t much food in the house was a comfort.

I didn’t sleep well at all. In the dead silence of the blacked-out neighborhood, all I could hear was the cracking of tree limbs, huge swooshing breaks of whole trees falling and soil uprooted, the tinkling of falling ice and the deep hum and boom of electricity and powerlines losing connection and lighting up the sky. While baby was soundly asleep, I poked my head out the window… the sounds were eerie, and strange and made me fearful.

My thoughts turned to Gaza. To every child who could not sleep due to bombs, mothers desperately seeking protection and soothing for their babies, food, wounds, death, and incessant bombing. Never knowing when you may die, or lose your baby, sister, brother, mother. Never knowing if you will reach medical aid. My thoughts spiraled and spun through the night — of my own discomfort and how utterly fragile our grid and systems are and how I might be able to build more security for myself and my little one.

I felt grateful, and guilty.

In the morning, I talked with my neighbor over a camp stove in my kitchen and blessedly hot coffee and oatmeal for my baby. We offered each other support and game plans for food and warmth and relayed information from others in the neighborhood. Thankfully, my best friends several blocks away still had power and a little trailer to keep Orri, my pup and I. Packing up was a scramble and I tossed everything in the car. Thankfully, warm air and rain moved in turning the ice to slush and we were able to leave my cold dead feeling house safely.

The security of home and cost of living felt obsolete and like a massive debt to my conscience as I stood within the cold walls and the grid dead. How is this sustainable? I wondered. In a multitude of layers, I knew and know and have known. I knew how quickly the house would be consumed by moss and brambles and mold and fungi — consumed by the very things that gave it life in the first place. Instead of a square home container, I wished for curved breathable walls, a stack of firewood, a clean and free source of water, and food, food grown and stashed away by me, and my community.

Preparedness has always been on my mind, yet always there’s a delay and excuse and reason why I haven’t prepared. But now, it sits at the fore of my mind. Climate chaos continues to spin and build and increasing uncertainty of weather events, grid security, food security. Now, more than ever I feel the need to work towards making a safety net, to put things by and plan for events such as this.

A bounty of seed packets sit on my kitchen counter, and the mounds of building good soil for garden beds is being worked on. Seeds lie in waiting to grow and build.

I have no real answers, just a knowing that I must do the best I can do, with what I have.