““I feel like we’re living in a snow globe”, she said. We were eating pizza around the wood stove, & between sips of local IPA, gazing out into a murky twilight, and two feet of fresh powder, slowly turning to mush. Temperatures were on the rise, but the power was still out. My phone pinged. “Lee couldn’t make it home past this downed tree last night and our plow truck is still at the shop,” it said. I stared at the device, listlessly. I knew in a pinch, we would trudge anywhere, and do anything necessary, to ensure a baby’s safety, or rescue a neighbor from inhospitable conditions. At least the wind had died down, so that walking between houses would not be an ordeal of blowing snow, and drifting. It had been much more of a real concern for me, when I lived alone on a hill, with three small children, without caring friends nearby, or any actual full time neighbors who were not psychopaths. I would terrify myself, carrying the last load of laundry from the car to the house, hair flying as ice chips hit my face, “What if, what if?” I would hear, and then quickly banish the thought. Or juggling a few pieces firewood at midnight, I would hear it again: “What if you dropped dead, right now?” as if the still un-stacked pile in the driveway could speak to me. Back then, there was no back up heat, and a broken down hellion of a generator, that would not behave. But some of us do it the hard way, not because its hard, but because it’s the closest approximation to honest living that we’ve been able to dream up, in a world beset, by nightmares. To be able to control the physical reality, even if its harsh, or remote, or not altogether sane, is often all we have. Closing the door on such a storm while enduring a private struggle of one’s own choosing, can be our only way of claiming a refuge, that we can truly call, our own. There are residual elements of that older chapter, still alive, in my life today. Not nearly as dire, not half as unfair or undeserved. Maybe I’ve learned something, or maybe, I’ve just recently caught up with the better half of my karma. I guess we all go through this, in various ways. Those of us who made it to the meeting of the historical society today, at the town library at 2 pm, all looked a bit worse for the wear, but, simultaneously, radiant. One was still waiting for electricity; a handful had their flush toilets back on line, and I would venture to say, most had heat. The upswing was self-evident. The conversation was animated. It’s almost as if the swell of ice water all around us, ready to inundate every nook and cranny of the landscape, was ready to explode within us. There was talk of the town-wide yard sale, of Eleanor in her nineties finally handing over the reins to Lucinda, and how many boxes we could expect to be filling up the front room of the historical society building, prior to the event. There were file cabinets needed moving, and flower beds, and donated bookcases, and a cemetery project. Sarah was looking for the oldest trees, and researching why they hadn’t been cut for centuries. I was still thinking about a headline I’d just read from a newspaper dated 1882: “Horse-Thief in Limbo: An Addison County Personage and His Equine Exploits”. I don’t know how much more excitement a person can absorb, without unraveling into a heap and yelling “Bring it on!”. The eclipse is just a factor. No one seems to have any focus right now. I’m not saying that’s a good, or a bad, thing, but it makes trying to achieve a single objective, very, very hard. So I might just take a snow shoe in the morning, and head out, to where the mountain’s tributaries will be vying for dominance. Out where liquid gold comes out of the ground, making the least obvious start, like a body collecting power. Something I’ve noticed lately, hiding in plain sight. Like a baby bear, oddly enough, which is one of the most unassuming creatures on the planet, until he becomes a social super-star, softening hearts by merely being himself.”
