There was no update on my collage progress last Friday because on Thursday we got hit with a major storm here in the California foothills. I'm from Cleveland, so I know snow. I know cold. I am used to living alone in my little house and stoking the wood stove to keep off the chill. But nothing prepared me for the intensity of what went down last week. I've tried to explain it to flatlander friends (flatlander = someone who doesn't live in the hills). The closest I got was "it was like an 20-hour avalanche, a meteor shower, the London Blitz, and being tossed in a ship at sea." Yes, I exaggerate, but how else to convey that I was terrified?
More than that, I was shocked how quickly my emotional state unraveled. Like a cosmic game of musical chairs, the storm came, the power went out, and all the stuff that fills up your brain -- Facebook, phone, cellphone, Rachel Maddow, Oprah, The Real Housewives, Charlie Sheen updates, the furnace kicking on, hot showers, looking in the refrigerator -- stops. And you're stuck with your thoughts and a cold nose and trying to figure out how to use your new oil lamps and realizing how easy it would be to knock it over and set the town on fire. And it just keeps snowing. And chunks of ice fall from the sky. Trees too. And I can see how not that long ago it was a triumph to make it through the winter. Because it still is. I took some photos of my day inside and the aftermath outside. Nothing captures the drama. And now that the sun is out, I have trouble remembering it myself. In fact, it looks kind of cozy...
This is my neighbor's tree, about 50 feet away from my house...
Look in the branches to see the tree trimmers. Yes, that is a house behind the tree...
Before the storm, I had been dissecting Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles, looking at the light, the composition, the perspective...
This was the direction I was headed...
Now, after my trip back to 19th century oil-lamp lighting, and my new thoughts about the fragile state of my psyche in isolation, I might make the piece darker.
I also briefly became a cat person. I'm telling you things got nuts. Bones, my neighbor's outdoor cat who is one of the toughest creatures I have ever met, cried her way inside. My neighbor is out of town.
My sister and her husband came an rescued me on Saturday afternoon. I spent a lovely night at her house playing Jenga with her girls, watching "The Social Network" and falling asleep to the rattle of their new generator. She blogged about it here.
Finally, it stopped snowing. My friend Ruth of Camping in Style, who posted about coming unglued in the storm here and made me feel like less of a wimp, took this photo...
Today I am getting back to "normal." Tomorrow I need to get more firewood. Another storm is on its way.
by Lance Woolaver.
