My little house on a hilltop overlooking a marsh, built in 1921, has survived many a big blow and storm, hurricane and blizzard. I’m not as old, but I have too. And this one was the most challenging of my 60 years on this side of the bridges.
It was the combo; heavy snow, two feet and then some, with winds a fishing captain clocked at 93 miles an hour at the rage’s crescendo. Laden pine trees couldn’t stand up to the one-two, and took out vulnerable power lines like giant brooms sweeping spider webs. Utility poles snapped and toppled, lines coiling like dark snakes on white.
Still my house sits. It is exposed, now also prey to falling limbs that in its youth never existed — the hill like most of the Cape was treeless. There were no direct hits this time, though I did dull two chains with chainsaw work on the driveway and around outbuildings.
I am not as exposed as my abode, physically anyway, despite how I feel sometimes. And I’m mobile, able to dodge in physical and emotional ways. But I’m not as sturdy.
I tried to shepherd my house through this bad-ass moment and it did the same for me. Of course the power went out, stayed out — and stayed out some more. I’m one of those people who says, “Damn, I really should get a generator,” but I always say it after the last big storm and never get around to it. I’m way off main roads and pavement (by Cape standards), including a steep curve, so yeah, it would be a prudent move.
Next time.
I also let my woodpile diminish this year, great timing. Usually I scavenge a cord or more to stuff into the stove’s maw, even been known to buy some, but I was lazy, a year older, so figured I’d rely more on propane, chillax a bit. Right.
Frozen pipes are the main threat, I can put on an extra sweatshirt and the dog has a good coat. Couldn’t even do the dripping pipe routine to make the freezing water temp higher, because I have my own well and it needs electricity to pump; town water will flow anyhow.
At least I had my act together enough to fill a few big buckets before the blow, so had water for coffee and to flush the toilet without having to melt snow. The stove being propane, the top four burners light with a match, fine to boil cowboy coffee and make stir-fry, though the oven needs that electric pilot starter. Always hated that design.
There will be many moments of this storm we all will remember: Howling wind late at night; snow that plastered the sides of the house and left windows glazed in glacial patterns; the bright next day when sculptures carved by the wind created beautiful white curves that memorialized the swoop and gesture of forces usually invisible.
For me the most memorable moment was late the first night. The house I know well was quiet in an olden way. There was no refrigerator hum, no whoosh from the basement as heat began to circulate, no click of a computer, no music or banter from the radio, not even the barely perceptible buzz of lightbulbs.
Silence settled into me, interrupted only by a subtle percussion of crackle from wood in the stove. Silence that begets stillness.
This was my consolation for not having a generator, the moment I never would have experienced. I enjoyed it as long as I could, and then, mind wandering, not able to stay in that exalted place, I lay down under an extra blanket, reminding myself to rouse every few hours to keep the stove alive, the house alive, myself alive.
