Thanks to the Big Bad Southern Ice Storm of ’09, my home, Cloud Creek Ranch, went 10 1/2 days with no power.
Paradise County as a whole had electricity only sporadically. It would go on, then go off again, as energizing one new line stressed another old one and the line went down. The situation was pretty much the same in neighboring areas as well.
On The Mountain, our main house had nothing. No heat. No water. No light. No computer connection. No TV. No radio. (Not-Quite-Son-in-Law Jeremiah and I tried using one of those wind-up radios to get information, but broadcast reception here on The Mountain has always been iffy. This time, the “if” in question was “if not.”)
The trailer my wife Gwen the Beautiful and I call the Annex had heat of a sort: the gas range. Keeping the oven on all day kept the temperature in the comfort zone, and, of course, we could cook there. Jeremiah already was ensconced in the Annex; he’d come to Paradise a few days before the ice storm to help me put up a new fence, which the storm had inconsiderately obliterated. I took over the trailer’s back bedroom, along with Emmy the Bold, Queen of The Mountain’s Dogs.
I enjoyed hanging with Jeremiah. We worked together from sunrise to sunset every day, trying to keep the property clear and redo the fence.
The days were filled with jokes and laughter as we became foxhole-style buds, and when the power situation in Paradise became more stable we would go into town and eat breakfast or lunch at the Mexican restaurant every day. Each of us even got a shower in Mountain Home courtesy of The Baxter Bulletin’s Freudensprung family — Kelly, Amanda and Bess — when their power returned.
But the nights…
Oh, those miserable nights!
Gwen was on a Mexican cruise. Couldn’t see or feel her. And, cell phone rates being what they are in international waters, we couldn’t talk to each other, either.
Without my wife beside me, the darkness that hit at 6:30 p.m. was a black, strangling cloud of futility.
My usual patterns were impossible to follow. During the day I did nothing that I usually did. Still, I felt no sense of loss because the time was filled with physical labor. But during the night there were no options. I felt nothing but loss. And had difficulty sleeping. Because I was unable to breathe.
At first, I thought my nightly gasping for a full breath of air was adult-onset asthma. But asthma meds did nothing. Then I figured the sensation was a panic attack. Except I didn’t feel panicked until after the “Oh my Lord, there’s no air!” feeling began.
By the sixth night, Jeremiah and I figured out what was really happening. Every evening we made a big bonfire out in the clearing, to get rid of all the shattered tree parts we’d cut up during the day. The trees were covered with lichen and moss and mold, including a cornucopia of indistinguishable mushrooms. I was breathing in the fumes of all this vegetation — and going into anaphylactic shock.
A little Epinephrine saved me on the night we figured it out.
No longer having the bonfire saved me thereafter.
My morale hit its low point on the tenth night. Jeremiah and I were eating a dinner of turkey breast-and-onions (better than it sounds) and looking out at the forest through the wall of glass in the Annex kitchen.
Suddenly, the lights came on!
We turned to each other, and, although I was afraid to, I started to grin —
And then the lights went off again.
Outside, however, the darkness was broken by dancing orange shadows.
Flames.
We ran outside. I called 911 on my cell while Jeremiah raced into the woods. A power line had fallen and ignited the grass and leaves along about 150 feet of the ground. Quickly, Jeremiah moved down the line, stomping the flames.
Luckily, they went out as quickly as they’d flared up, and we were safe enough for me to cancel the emergency call.
But I didn’t feel safe until the next night, when at almost the same time as before, the lights on ranch came on once more.
And stayed.
The following day we finished most of our work with renewed energy.
Gwen returned home the next morning.
As far as I was concerned, the Big Bad Ice Storm was over.
Larry Brody is an author, veteran television writer and producer and creative director of Cloud Creek Institute for the Arts. He, his wife and their dogs, cats, horses and chickens live in Marion County. The other residents of the mythical town of Paradise reside in his imagination, however, and any resemblance to actual places or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Originally published March 12, 2009