January 22, 2024
Day 843 of the Adventure
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| Mini icicles on the firewood box |
We've made it through the night and the ice the weathermen were predicting for us. It rained most of the night but not enough. It was cold last night but not enough (I guess anyway) There is a glistening to the trees around here but it's pretty light. The outside temperature is 33 degrees here and according to science, that should be enough to halt any further ice accumulation. Regular ice storms are one of the realities of life in the Ozarks. Sometimes we can go several years without any. Other times we can manage to squeeze in several in a winter. The devastating ones don't happen too frequently. Maybe every five to six years. I remember one that we lived through back in the late 90's. It had pole mounted transformers lighting up the sky all night with bright blue electrical flashes and explosions all around town. If you stepped outside, the dead quiet was only interrupted by the constant snapping and crashing of tree limbs breaking and falling. In fact, it wasn't just the limbs, entire trees were breaking and crashing to the ground. Even the big mature oaks were not strong enough to withstand the weight of the ice. We lost power very early the first night and it was out for five days. We were partially prepared for it but not completely. I learned that a 1,400 watt generator was not enough to power anything other than a few lights, a TV and DVD player. We had installed an auxiliary LP wall mounted heater in our basement living area that kept the indoor temps in the upper 50's and low 60's. An LP fireplace on the main upstairs level kept the living room almost warm enough to sleep if you brought plenty of blankets with you. We had dragged our bed mattress from the bedroom in the far end of the house where temperatures hovered around 40 to the living room where the fireplace was located. We had some big candles lit in the bathrooms for light. The water heater was out so we ran out of hot water the first day. The food from the refrigerator went in coolers out on the back deck where the temperature hovered around freezing the whole time. We didn't lose any food due to it thawing out. And we waited........
That storm changed my perspective on preparedness. We spent five days without power. We had enough heat to keep things from freezing but not enough to ever get comfortable. After a couple days, the storm had passed, but the effects remained. Sometime in the middle of the night after the fifth day, I heard rustling and voices outside. It was linemen from the power company following power lines to see if there were any that needed repaired before re-activating the electricity. A limb had pulled our service off the side of the house, but it had not broken it or dragged it to the ground. I dressed and went out to meet them. They believed the damage on our section of power feeds were in good enough shape to turn back on and it should only be a few minutes. I thanked them and they wandered off back into the darkness. A half hour later, everything flickered back on and we began to return to normal. It took a couple hours to warm the house back up which was the most welcome part of the experience.
We lost power here at the cabin due to snow storms twice last winter. Neither time was more than for a few hours. The difference is we didn't lose heat. We didn't lose the electrical power on the solar powered battery system circuits that supply power to about 70 percent of the cabin. Our stove is a non-electronic LP stove so the ability to cook was intact. We even retained our internet (not that internet matters that much) but it kept us in touch with the rest of the world and let us monitor the storms as they moved through the area. As we lay in bed around 3am knowing we've lost our electrical connection to the rest of the world, I smiled to myself. We had conquered at least a part of "grid independence". And it felt good! Everything we have on the property is buried underground so the possibility of losing anything due to tree limbs is reduced to potential damage to vehicles, equipment or buildings. So far so good there.
I realize that preparedness goes far beyond power outages, but you have to start somewhere, right? As we continue our "Cabin in the Woods" life, I find a continual new enthusiasm for the backwoods experience. A life of self-reliance and independence from the outside forces we have largely come to rely on for our basic necessities. I'm good with that!
Carry On
Adventure Quote: “Over the years, Americans in particular have been all too willing to squander their hard-earned independence and freedom for the illusion of feeling safe under someone else's authority. The concept of self-sufficiency has been undermined in value over a scant few generations. The vast majority of the population seems to look down their noses upon self-reliance as some quaint dusty relic, entertained only by the hyper-paranoid or those hopelessly incapable of fitting into mainstream society.” ―
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