Winter Storms Have Hit Hard....Again

This is the first time in three days I’ve been able to get all the pieces together to sit and write anything. What began as a day of hard rains on Saturday and a loud night with almost 100 km winds, took on nightmare proportions after we got up on Sunday morning. Instead of backing off or slowing down in the light of day, the wind gusts increased and shifted. It is sickening to watch 100’ standing trees flailing around like stir sticks in a coffee cup or laying sideways from the force of the wind. The debris that rained on the house through the night was as nothing compared to the hour after we got up. I kept pulling myself away from the windows, not wanting to watch. When a large branch threw itself at the sliding door I was sitting next too, I went to stand in a door jamb to wait for the rest of the tree to follow.

Put together the sounds of hurricane force winds screaming through a forest with the individual sound of one old growth tree breaking away from the ground to crash through it’s still standing fellows to the ground and you’ve experienced something you’ll never forget. The only sound I have to compare it with is of a jet engine taking off.

Our forests have been ravaged hard by these winds again. Three days without electricity and there are still miles of torn up power lines between us and hot and cold running life. Everything revolves around power, so everything changes without it. We had telephone for the first day without power, but there’s been no phone for the last two days. Last winters storms and resulting five day power outage gave us reason to find, purchase and install a small generator. That is why I am able to write about this while still in the midst of it.

We have one old growth hemlock uprooted, it took a couple of smaller cedars down with it. One of those cedars hit the roof of the RV shed...didn't damage the RV. I wrote the above this morning...it's after dinner, still no electric power, but the phone line is working. It's started to rain again, and there are more wind warnings.

Living without hydro electricity at the end of a dead end road is like living with the Dreamspell Calendar...time has no meaning...there is only light and no light.