“The afternoon was crystal blue, draped in stillness, not a breath of wind. But predictions had been circulating. My friend, cashiering at the local food Co-op, reported a steady stream of “preppers” filling their baskets with extra supplies, a controlled mayhem of sorts. Rumors of a high wind advisory for the nighttime hours, rippled through the isles, tinged with both excitement & fear. Depending on where you stood, economically, this kind of talk leaned one way, or the other. Those with adequate backup, would be fine. Those without, would be forced to scramble, and let go of conveniences, for who knows how long. The hill country is home to many hidden properties, & many low profile citizens, who are rarely quoted on “Vermont Public”. I, myself, fall somewhere in the middle. Debates about energy, I take with a huge grain of salt. I know what it is to raise a family far off the grid. I also know the ups & downs of cash flow, and scarcity. The choices I’ve made to keep working at what I love, and live where I feel most alive, come hand-in-hand with harsh realities, as well as a euphoric sense of autonomy. All of this makes me a “prepper” who is less worried about toilet paper, and more worried about water, and systems failure. The big wind did arrive, finally, during the regular hours of sleep. And maybe I slept through the first power outage, but definitely, not the second. Neighbors began to check in, as neighbors should. I was the only one on my end of the road, who could still see the online updates from Green Mountain Power, thanks to my newly installed propane generator. What a luxury, ironic at best, I thought to myself. Bill & Tania had dragged my older, dysfunctional machine over the mountain as a favor, only to see it condemned by the local repairmen. As the whole situation became clearer to me, I felt sheepish. Bill probably knew it was a piece of shit, but there is always hope. And sometimes we help friends, even knowing the effort is futile. Because what’s needed at the time is a show of support, of pulling up the rear, when someone is down and out. Which would be me, at various junctures. And obviously they had been there too. So how does one build out, from despair? With friends. Now I found myself abler, after many years of missing the mark. Economics? It’s a huge factor. But not the only one, obviously. As the snow began to fall, fall harder and faster, turn to rain, blow into every crevice and crack of my halfway finished house, and howl through the night into the very next day, I could only bow to the god of friendship. And so they came. They came with their dishes they could not wash, their smelly bodies they could not wash, their lack of information and connection with the outside world, and more ... I knew that I could only continue to bow, to the bonds of friendship. The driveways we couldn’t clear of heavy, wet snow, the pumps we couldn’t rouse because of plugs and other missing electrical components, the cell towers only barely reachable when wiFi went down, the lack of light with which to read books, or see cooking implements, or charge up backup batteries, or even illuminate the erasure of paths , or cries for simple help. This world in which we live, small already, somehow suddenly become even smaller; this we would bridge by one enormously intangible asset called: friendship. And so, our days immediately shifted ‘round each other. Fewer bings, and alarms, notating incoming, from a world made less important by the losses of our contact with it. More focus on what each other needed: a bath, a meal, a defiant gathering that would move wherever it had to, to bring back joy, and fellowship, and laughter. Our roads blocked by old maples, blown over into wires, it was only another practice to be taken up, like any good Buddhist would do. Things may be moving in this direction, hard to say. What I do know, is that the power of us, defies any strange, overlord of destruction operating among us. My solo hike up an old road into a forest I’d never seen yesterday, and our return there today, cemented the very best medicine. We are here for each other, even as our futures spin further into the foreign country of deprivation and need. It’s the same old world, okay, and a brand new one, perhaps, as some would suggest. But whether in a battle or an embrace, this is the only one we’ll be able to recognize, call out, reimagine and in so doing, transform.”
