FIRE & ICE - (originally posted March 10, 2008)

Fire and Ice
March 10, 2008 at 4:51 pm


I am pining for Spring! And just as we are arduously approaching the vernal equinox…where the light is equal, and the fire of the sun is felt more strongly, we have an icestorm. This icestorm directly preceeding daylight savings time -where we “get more light” in the evening left us without power or phone for nearly 24 hours in the country. What a contrast, this fire and ice dance. Today, the ice is still caked on the trees and looks like rock candy I used to eat as a kid. When the wind blows, the branches crackle and sound as if they will break, but it’s only the ice.

So, what do you do on a power outage? Wimps go to hotels where they can plug in their laptops and swim in the pool and eat out. They go where the toilets flush, the towels are dry and at the flick of a switch the light comes on. TV is available, hot baths and showers, computerized games and telephones. Here on Blissfarm, we just sit and wait and make the best of it. We have a gas stove that can be lit with a match to cook. We always have water jugged up and a drawer full of candles. Boardgames and cards anyone? Flashlights at the ready by each bedside. The girls run about lighting candles and after they are done the house looks like a seance is about to occur. I laid up a stack of books I had been meaning to get to, and knitting that needed finishing, and rested a flashlight on my shoulder to read and knit by. After a while the girls became bored. The excitement of the candles began to wear off and they missed Webkins. So, the girls decide to give us foot massages!

Our son - down at a nearby neighbors house, and ready for an evening of teenaged hootin’ and hollering meets the same power outage. So much for your IM’ing, Facebooking and MySpacing! So much for those computerized games ( we don’t allow at home) Wanna know what they did? They played hide and seek! Teenage boys! We’re talking ready for highschool 14 year olds - hiding, seeking, flashlight tagging and rolling each other up in futons to become “human burritos”!

Good old fashioned fun.

Where we have to go to the nearby run off stream and get a five gallon pail of water just to flush the toilet! ( No running water in a power outage) You have to get crafty. You have to conserve. You have to think and be creative. Phone was knocked out too in this icestorm, so there was no calling your friend to tell them the power was out! No internet. Nothing.

Were we cut off from the world? Hell no.

We are OF the world.

Life has become so fast, so technologized ( is that a word) that we have forgotten how to “be” how to “make do” not having everything done for us - from the auto dial to the answering machine the microwave and electric blow dryer, clothes dryer, leaf blower (what happened to rakes?) The cell phones, the instant messaging, the texting. Automatic cars that park themselves, moving sidewalks and escalators. How ’bout that Roomba? The vacuum that “vacuums for you”!? We take things for granted, and our children are growing up thinking the world owes them a task, a job, a life. My kids don’t know how to make popcorn in a pot on the stove! (Mental note: make popcorn on the stove and show them.) Until last summer at an old camp up north, they had never seen a rotary dial phone! They couldn’t figure out how to work it!

Why do things have to be so fast? I think it’s time to slow down. One reason why I love living in the country is you get the natural rhythm of nature in your face on a daily basis. Seasons change, the sun moves, the ice storm happens. Fire and Ice. Cause and Effect. Yin and Yang. As above , so below. Nature is usually not fast. I try to remind myself of this every day. This also reminds me of something I read by Bruce Chatwin :

“A white explorer in Africa, anxious to press ahead with his journey, paid his porters for a series of forced marches. But they, almost within reach of their destination, set down their bundles and refused to budge. No amount of extra payment would convince them otherwise. They said they had to wait for their souls to catch up.”

We need to wait for our souls to catch up. We need to move through life at a pace that honors the earth that lives within us. I choose to live in connection to nature and her natural rhythms. I honor the earth and her cycle changes. I bend with flexibility at the changes in weather. Living in the country grounds me. I cannot imagine living anywhere else. Though I love what technological advantages exist in my life, I could not imagine living in an urban jungle. Too fast. The extremes, the ebbing and flowing helps balance me. Water seeks its own level and what is ice now will be fire soon. Change is constant.

This spring I shall plant a large vegetable garden, and live even closer to the land, eating the food grown on my property and tended with my own hands with the vibration of love as I know this will feed my family best. I will add more chickens and goats. Fresh eggs are delectable, and goats are the best land browsers, twig eaters, and kitchen scrap composters I know. They’re pretty darn loveable too. The animals teach the kids responsibility and compassion, animal kingdom behavior, and build memories of a country upbringing. I will hang the laundry on the line to dry in the fire of the sun, and power of the wind. I will cook over an open fire more often, and sleep under the stars when I can. I will tend the paths to the grove and make offerings along the way, and I will grow pumpkins to share with all of my friends.

Nature is equilibrium. Fire and Ice. Ebb and Flow. Sometimes it takes an icestorm to not “disconnect” us from reality by having no power or phone - but to “reconnect” us to reality, and our truer nature. Being connected to nature by any means is the best thing anyone can do. Spend less time at the computer, on the phone,and IM’ing and texting. Put your hands in the earth, dip your toes in the stream. Have lunch up close and personal with a human instead of driving your car, talking on the phone, and eating your fast food at the same time. Smell the fresh air, hear the birds and crickets or even the subtle crackle of ice on a frozen branch.

Listen. See. Feel. Use your senses.

Don’t wait for an ice storm and power disconnect, to reconnect.