Sawing our way out
Monday
morning, I was bound and determined to get to town, if only to let my
mother know that we hadn't been wiped off the map. Mark and I
both geared up and filled our backpacks and hands with the bare
essentials --- chainsaw tools, mixed gas, empty gas jugs in case we
made it to town, my laptop for the same reason, two oranges in case we
got stranded on the way, and the chainsaw. We only have one pair
of waders between us at the moment, so Mark had to cross the creek,
change into his work boots, then toss the waders back across the cold
water to let me cross. I was very glad that he has a good
throwing arm.
The driveway was just as
much work to clear as we'd thought. It took a couple of hours of
hard sawing and dragging to move the pines that had fallen across the
road, but the work was for naught. We got in the car...and
watched as its tires spun vainly on the icy snow.
My
next thought was to walk to the neighbor's house a quarter of a mile
down the road and beg the use of their phone. The public road had
been plowed, but was seriously icy, making me glad that our little car
hadn't made it out of the driveway. Along the way, we ran into
another neighbor who gave us the bad news --- everyone in the area has
no power or phone. The electric company is hoping to restore the
juice by Christmas to those on the main road, which I figure leaves us
looking at New Years. Time to hunker down for the long haul.
Stay tuned for part V soon. Meanwhile, check out our ebook that gives the secret of not worrying that your boss is going to fire you while you're incommunicado for a week or two.
This post is part of our Two Weeks Without Electricity series.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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