green light

Despite tragedies and snowstorms, we made it. It's Christmas-time, the 24th and 25th of this month, numbers which glow on the calender almost all by themselves, numbers which have a magic look to them when paired with December.

A few days ago, we cut down our tree from the woods and dragged it home over the snow. We set it in a bucket of sandy gravel and added water. We used string to set up guy wires so the tree would stay up, and then we put on lights, ornaments, and tinsel, in that order. None of these adornments are new, except for one ornament that was a present to Mum from a client.

From the 20th to the 23rd, storms hit the Maritimes and didn't let up. There was snow, lots of it, and high winds, and the power went out for many people across the province. Nova Scotia Power worked diligently but still the power took two to three days to come back, so we were extra aware of the shortness of the Solstice sunlight hours. It reminded me of last year, when the power went out for three days, and we realized just how much more work it is to do our normal activities, without electricity!

The first thing I miss is music. I play CDs a lot, and listen to the radio. Thanks to a Christmas present from Grandmaman last year, I now have a wireless radio that you can charge by turning a crank on the side. It's fantastic and I use it all the time, and it comes in handy during a power outage. But still, I miss being able to go to my room, turning on a cozy light, and putting on some music. My basement room feels especially subterranean at night when the power's out, and I'm sitting there trying to write in my journal by the light of three candles!

By the second day, we worry about our freezers, and put blankets on them to keep the cold in. Mum filled two plastic bags with snow and put them inside the freezers to keep things cool. We store a lot of food in those freezers, and during a power outage we're nervous, wondering if we'll have to haul everything outside to the cold, snowy outdoors. The snow-in-bags method was successful, though, and our food survived.

I don't know when this particular thought came to me, although it could have been when I was doing the dishes by candlelight, using water I'd heated on our propane stove. It could also have been while we were playing cribbage (also by candlelight and lamplight), or when I was trying to write in my journal. This is what I realized: without electricity, a lot of things are more difficult, or simply nonexistent. And so the simpler things become more special, and as a result, our holidays take on new meaning. I was thinking especially of the holidays of this season. Solstice, Hanukkah, and Christmas, each celebrating light, peace and generosity, mean more to me when natural light ends at 4:30 PM and doesn't come back until 7:30 the next morning. Gifts found or made, wrapped and given among friends and family mean more when we're spending our time tending the woodstove, hauling buckets of water for the toilet, heating water for dishes, and generally humbled and hobbled by the lack of power.

Though the power is back on now, and we'll soon forget we ever went without it, I'm going to try and remember the power outage lessons during Christmas, and be especially grateful for the cooked food, the lights on the tree, and the gathered friends.

Merry Christmas to each of you. May you be blessed this Holiday Season.

power down, part III

Tuesday morning we woke up with no power. Third day in a row.

By now it was starting to get irritating, and restrictive. The house was largely quiet -- no radio programming, no CDs, no movies. I have realized as a result of this temporary deprivation how much I love to listen to music, and need it, really. Also, the house was chilly except when the sun shone, as Mum didn't want to use the wood stove in case it heated up the freezers.

The house was quiet, the computer didn't work, and doing what used to be simple and easy tasks like flushing the toilet, washing dishes or doing much of anything after dark now came with associated work: hauling buckets of water upstairs, maneuvering around the buckets while in the bathroom, heating water, etc. My initial feeling on Sunday of "This power outage is kind of good in a sense, because it shows us all how vulnerable we are when we lose our electricity," had given way, or worn away, really, to a sense of frustration. Also, I had the sense of being a lot more reliant than usual on sunlight. Until this power outage, I hadn't realized how great a sunlit house really is, until I couldn't cheer up a cloudy day just by flicking a switch.

But at least Tuesday was sunny. I went for my power-walk, which made me feel somewhat normal, and when I got back there was that telltale rough hum coming from behind the house, and Monty's truck in the driveway. The power was still off, but the generator was going full tilt. Monty reported that the crew from New England was working hard, but it looked like it would be late tonight before the power was restored. Mum, tired, translated: "So that means tomorrow, at noon." The original worst-case scenario had come true, day by day: 72 hours without power. Of course, by now there was no longer any trace of the storm, and the sun was shining bright among the leafless trees, but the effects of Post-Tropical Storm Noel lingered on, becoming normal as we did our best to carry on with our lives despite the lack of electricity.

Lunch was, again, potatoes with onions, and again, delicious. I had sliced a few ripe tomatoes and seasoned them liberally with salt and pepper, and had some sharp cheddar on the side. The balsamic vinaigrette on the potatoes gave it all a light kick. I was going to do the dishes after, but decided that I'd rather spend what few hours of sunlight remained, outside, knitting on the deck. After I'd had enough of that, I came inside and started writing out what would become these blog posts, by hand on scrap paper, with the steady, one-note hum of the generator behind me. The rest of the house was quiet. Every now and again a crow would fly silently by the window. I wrote as the sun sank lower and lower in the sky, and until it set behind the mountain around 5.

This power outage has certainly got me thinking. We rely on electricity for so many things, and as a result of it, have lost touch, somewhat, with the world outside our houses. This is the kind of phrase you often hear, condemning modern society, but in this case it's my first-hand experience. Not only that, but I've realized that it doesn't really matter whether you consider yourself an environmentalist or not -- having electric lights that you can turn on at night, and that you become used to, will by virtue of their existence cause you to pay less attention to when the sun sets. Similarly, if you have electric heat, you'll get used to that, and won't pay as much attention to wearing wool socks and sweaters, or to designing houses to face the south so the windows capture solar heat.

This unplanned experiment in "off the grid" living, now wearing on into the third day, was certainly showing us the wide use of and dependence on electric power in this community, and the simple power of habit keeping it that way.

(Of course, if you were truly living "off the grid", you would have chosen to do so, and not only that, but you would likely have alternative power sources in place -- small-scale solar, wind or hydro power for necessary appliances. And there'd be plenty of other aspects of your life running on human or animal power, like food production, bringing wood in, transportation, etc.)

For the rest of the evening I puttered quietly: I did the dishes by lamp again, which was, to be fair, very cozy. I played Solitaire and read. Around 7 I heard the fridge trying to start, as the power flickered, then turned off again, flickered, then went off. I realized that when we could turn on the electric lights, I would really miss the coziness of the kerosene lamp! Then, at 7:30, the fridge sputtered to life. "Hurrah!" Mum exclaimed. I flicked a light switch, experimentally. On came the light! Miracle! Mum was excited: "I can warm up a bean bag in the microwave again! I can turn the heaters on!" Having electricity again was luxury. Having become used to not having it, it felt like too much, suddenly. We could flush the toilet, and turn on the hot water tap, and heat the rooms! All using electric current. Amazing! I found, as well, that having electric lights on at night, lighting the whole house if we wanted to, felt a bit garish.

We decided to play one more game of cribbage, to carry on the tradition. I insisted on using the kerosene lamp.

***

It's now been a little over a week since the power came back on. The shock of having power again has worn off, as of course it would, since we've lived much longer with electricity than without it. But writing these blog posts about our 72 hours powerless allows me to remember it in detail, and be that much more thankful for the computer I'm writing on, the music I'm listening to, and the electric light bulb I'm writing by.

There are also the "It Could Be Worse" questions, like: "What if it had been the middle of winter?" Or, "What if there had been no fossil fuels, either, so we couldn't run generators or cars?" These are the kinds of questions I think a lot more people need to be talking about, because there is a very good chance that our worldwide, abundant energy resources will stop peaking and start running out, in this century to be sure. And maybe experiencing power outages for 72 hours would get people thinking?

How about a lighter question -- in the event of a power outage, and assuming you're relatively comfortable like we were, what would you do to pass the time?

power down, part II

Monday morning we woke up with no power.

The sun was shining, the air was frosty, and in the distance we could hear the low hum of our neighbors using generators. We had porridge like we do each morning, but no radio in the background, and washing the dishes was a bit more time-consuming: heating water, or at least waiting for the gravity-fed trickle from the tap -- cold water, of course -- to fill each bowl so we could scrub it. Then we both did our best to make ourselves presentable with washcloths and combs and deodorant, and headed into the village for appointments and errands.

However, all was not well: Mum was starting to worry about our freezers. We rely on two deep-freezes to keep summer garden produce, meats, berries, sauces and soups frozen until we need them. They can sit unopened for 24 hours and stay frozen, but the top layer of each freezer was starting to thaw, so Mum took Monty up on his offer to bring his generator over and give some "juice" to the freezers. When we got back from town there was a rumbling hum coming from the other side of the house, and the freezers under their insulating blankets were working again. Hurrah! A generator, as you probably know, works on fuel, and converts that to electricity, and so it sounds like a souped-up lawnmower.

Monty gave us the news that apparently, the problem had been located on the power grid, and it happened to be right behind his house, in the woods. However, it was a complicated problem involving a new pole and some special wires not readily available, and there were no local crews available either! So it would take some more time before linemen from New England arrived and it could be fixed. The power company people were saying "power will be restored maybe late tonight," but we weren't holding our breath.

It began to cloud over again around one. While we prepared a lunch of onions fried with the leftover mashed potatoes, and cold cuts of chicken on the side, Mum cleaned out the fridge and moved most of the items to the covered porch, where it's colder, especially at night. We were starting to get testy: Mum griped, "I didn't ask for this job!" I stayed silent, knowing that for me to be snarky just now was to get on both of our nerves, which we didn't need. Lunch, however, was delicious. "As long as there's the smell of frying onions," Mum said, "it feels like a home."

Later I called the library to renew some books, as the phone lines still worked. The librarian lives near us and she was dismayed to hear that the power down our way was still off. "Oh ... that upsets me very much," she said in her trademark soft, quiet voice that never sounds upset at all, and didn't now. "I'm sorry!" I said, "Please don't shoot the messenger!" "I won't," she said, laughing. But her household, like many others, has an electric stove, so they couldn't cook food or heat water at all, making the power outage that much more uncomfortable to endure.

An hour or so before darkness fell, we went over to Monty's to take him up on another offer -- hot showers. Using his generator, he got his water heater going, and even though I had only been two days without a shower, it felt remarkably good to under the nice hot water. I went, then Mum did, and while she showered, I blow-dried my hair at the kitchen table, by the light of a bare bulb on a lamp that Monty had rigged up for me. It reminded me a bit of the days when I was a small child, when my parents were together and we lived in the cabin in the woods. During the winter, after a bath, my brother and I would wrap our towels around our small bodies and stand, wriggling with pleasure, by the wood stove, allowing its heat to bake our skin. Roughly 400 square feet contained the wood stove, bathtub and the rest of the house, and the warmth and intimacy of those evenings remain a fond memory.

That evening I called Janice.

"Hi," I said, "I'm calling from the 19th Century!" She laughed, then said, "What?"

"I'm using a kerosene lamp to see, and I'm boiling water on the stove to do my dishes!"

"Oh ... well, I'm using the Internet," She replied, cheekily. Later I thought that this conversation is the closest I'll ever get to time traveling.

That night we again sat around the kerosene lamp, playing cribbage. Monty's generator was again working hard keeping our freezers going, doing double duty and being moved back and forth between his home and ours, an 8-km drive, every few hours. As well, it provided a constant hum in the background. We were all tired and kept miscounting our crib hands, to the point that we started light-heartedly accusing each other of being stoned, two fifty-somethings and me.

When I went to bed that night, again in long-johns and wool socks, I fell asleep even with the generator going in the room next to me. At that moment, I didn't much care if there might be electricity the next day -- the only thing I was interested in was the cozy confines of my bed.

To be continued...


(Photo by Marlo)

power down, part I

Sunday morning we woke up with no power.

This wasn't surprising, as Post-Tropical Storm Noel (known to his friends down South as Hurricane Noel) had hit the Maritimes the night before, brandishing winds between 90 and 180 km/h, and heavy rains amounting to, in various places, between 30 and 90 mm. We were warned to be prepared for the storm, to have emergency supplies, and to be able to last 72 hours with no electricity, worst-case scenario.

I had filled three big jugs with drinking water. We'd readied the flashlights and the kerosene lamp. We moved the two deck chairs in and secured garden things like buckets. Then we hunkered down with the excitement that comes before a storm. Late that night, the storm hit; the winds howled, the rain came down in buckets, and we were safe and cozy inside, though our sense of safety was heightened by the unknown, the real possibility of danger.

So we woke up Sunday morning, safe, ready to investigate the storm damage. No power, but we'd expected that. Mum called the NS Power hotline to report the outage, and a recorded message told her the power would be back on Tuesday at noon. After a bit of a panic, we decided that was probably worst case scenario, and the power would come on Monday at the latest.

We went for a drive, along one side of the bay and then the other. The winds were still fairly high and the waves on the lake made it look like the open ocean. Trees were toppled here and there, some on power lines, so we had to drive slowly. In the village itself, the power was back on, as it's on a different power grid, so we were able to get hot beverages at the cafe, where we met some of our neighbors doing the same, and then made our way back home.

Later that afternoon, Monty came over for dinner, a chicken Mum had roasted in our propane-fueled stove. We talked and reported news, and when it began to get dark around 5:30, we lit the kerosene lamp and a few candles, and played cribbage. Mum was glad she'd bought herself a small headlamp, as it made it easier to do kitchen chores in the dark, and freed up her hands. Of course, in order to do the dishes, she had to heat up water on the stove, but at least we had water. Our well has enough gravity to feed a slight trickle of water to the first floor sink, by itself, but others weren't as lucky -- their water is pumped out of the well by electricity alone.

Even later, I brought out a can of pennies I'd had for years and always meant to roll, and set to work while Mum and Monty talked. Before I knew it Mum was counting the pennies out into piles of fifty, and Monty was rolling them along with me. I said, "I'll take you guys out for coffee with the money we roll!" Later we realized we rolled enough to pay for a whole large pizza -- over $20 in coins, mostly pennies.

Then Mum brought out two bags of fresh grapes from Monty's property, and we set to work once more, picking the stems off, then squishing the grapes with our hands and a potato masher. Having no power felt like a novelty that would end soon, like a not entirely unwelcome trip into the past. I remarked that if we were on an old-time Cape Breton farm, there'd be an old person or two rocking in the background, and I would probably be married with a couple of kids. Somehow I was glad it was only a fantasy.

By the time it got to be ten 'o' clock, I was beat and ready for bed. In order to brush my teeth, I took a mason jar of water upstairs, for dipping the brush in, and cleaning it afterwards. But I still turned on the taps out of habit, even though nothing came out. Then to flush the toilet, we had to bring buckets of rainwater upstairs, taken from the ever-handy 50-gallon barrel that collects water from the eaves, which we then poured into the tank. The inconveniences made themselves clear right away, although the novelty hadn't worn off yet.

My bedroom was chillier than the rest of the house, since it's in the basement. But it wasn't too bad, and after I climbed into bed wearing long johns and wool socks, I was soon toasty warm. One day without electricity was do-able, and over!

To be continued...