The night without artificial light
The ice storm that hit most of New England and some of New York last week is long gone. In most places, the shimmering coat that covered everything for a day has melted, and the downed branches and power lines have been cleared.
But that doesn’t mean the power is on. In most states, there are still whole towns without power. In most towns, there are still pockets of people without power.
Well, lucky me. I’m one of those still without power. As I write this, I’m sitting in the warm dining room of a good friend who has kindly consented to let me visit every day for as long as I want. I eat, recharge my batteries (literally), take a shower, and just generally get comfortable.
I’ve learned that the most important thing to have in a power outage of any duration is a good and generous friend. The second is patience (wearing thin, I must say). The third is an appreciation of the strange beauty of it all.
Beauty? Yes. At night, driving through the part of town that was (and still is) without street lights or traffic lights, I feel transported back to another time and place—except, of course, for the fact that I’m driving a car. The moon has been full and luminous, and it’s the only light there is in that area of town. The dark seems darker than usual, and the moon brighter in contrast, much more of a presence.
In the day, during the hours the sun is out, it seems a wonderful thing to have natural light and not have to function with candles and flashlights when inside. But at night, when I’m in my place and padding about in my down jacket, I notice how beautiful candlelight is but how little it actually illuminates. Just the bit in its immediate proximity—so very different from the uniform brightness of electric lights, which must have seemed a miracle when they were first invented. They seem like a miracle again to me right about now.
Enough romanticism! Get OUT! Get OUT NOW!
You should read “In Praise of Shadows” by Junichiro Tanizaki.
How have you kept your pipes from freezing?
I remember going two weeks without power after hurricane Carol came through Massachusetts. We had a well in the basement and, after putting a handle on the pulley, could pump drinking water. Toilet water we carried up in pails from the pond out back. The stove was mixed kerosene and butane, so there was no problem cooking meals, and to pass the evenings my dad read from his WWII diary by the light of an oil lamp. For a child it was more adventure than hardship.
I envy your weather, your enforced changes in routine, your world that changes radically yet gently. Here across the continent, it’s chilly and mostly dry, with little hardship and no adventure, and yet again Californians (mostly immigrants from who knows or cares where else) will decry yet another drought and blame global warming and forget that we are subject to weather cycles of six years or so and not just one. I’d love to be forced into the 19th Century for a few days. But I’d have to be forced.
oooh! I love power outages! The silence of the world can finally be heard. No humming appliances. No cd music. Just silence.
Yes, Melanie, it’s like the sound between the ears of a liberal…
(OK, that was cheap, but I couldn’t resist)
Being at the end of the line for power transmission, almost anything causes us to lose power; two or three times for 5 days with a 1 day loss not being unusual. Note that one of the recent unintended consequences of more government regulation of power generation prices is less line maintenance staff. Being in the country, we have more resources that those in the cities or suburbs, but losing power is just as unsettling; we have a stream and a spring, which of course are all far downhill and therefore they are hopefully not needed reserves. Our new country kitchen has a wood burner and propane stove so we can cook on either and stay warm. We also have a 5k pull to start gasoline generator that can be run occasionally to operate the central oil heater to bring up the temperature in the whole house, run the hot water heater and operate the well pump to recharge the water pressure tank, refill the toilets and our 30 gallon water storage tank in the basement then take showers. The water heater and well pump pull too much power to operate at the same time. It would have been nice to have a gas/propane water heater but that is for another day. Take care and be safe.
I echo Neo’s and Melanie’s sentiments. I went to VA just yesterday and you just couldn’t get out from underneath all the noise.
The TV blared at uncomfortable decibels; people spoke in mid-range shouts to be heard over the TV; and the nurses and attendants shouted out names for the next patient over everything. It sounded like a bleeding madhouse.
If you notice, there is precious little silence in our world now. There is invariably a TV in the lobby, music in the hallways. While you eat, while you work, while you do almost every activity imaginable— noise and visual stimulation is a constant accompaniment. You have iPods, cellphones, text-messaging devices, laptops, navigating systems… all this can drive one mad with distraction.
So, yes, a couple days of candlelight and silence doesn’t sound too bad. But only for a couple of days.
We were up to 30 candlepower Saturday night.
Temperature in the house got down to 55 at night, but we were able to keep it at 63 during the day with the fireplace.
Good time to catch up on reading. We did buy some LED headlamps later, after the power came back on, because the incandescent book lights really chew through the batteries.
Cooking was done on a camp stove, and our sleeping bags were opened over the bed. We were pretty comfortable, but concerned we would run out of wood. We don’t have much in our current place; certainly not compared to the several cords we usually have around, to say nothing of an excellent wood stove.
OTOH we had town water from the water tower (which I assume would have backup generators on the pumps).