This commentary is by Walt Amses, a writer who lives in North Calais.
“All the snow has turned to water, Christmas Days have come and gone.” — John Prine.
The night before the night before Christmas had almost everything: snow, a rapid warmup and torrential rain accompanied by destructive gales; a precipitous temperature drop followed by sleet, freezing rain and finally 6 inches of snow that fell wet and heavy, instantaneously flash freezing, locking us in a shimmering panorama of white, the texture and weight of iron ore.
What these nights didn’t have was any of the light celebrated for eons around winter solstice, a casualty of widespread power outages in central Vermont.
Although losing power is nothing new if you live out in these decidedly rural places, exactly when it blipped off and how long it lasted provided the biggest challenges. We couldn’t recall being out of light during the darkest time of the year and it’s been years since we’ve lost power for multiple days, especially right before the holiday, disrupting plans that were fragile to begin with mainly because one of my finest attributes is procrastination, which doesn’t usually have much of an impact since I’ve gotten used to doing things at the last minute. Which circumstances made impossible, offering a unique opportunity to appear especially half-assed, of which I would soon take advantage.
Things certainly could have been way worse — a speed bump, nothing more. The luxury of having a wood stove nipped in the bud any notion of bedding down in the elementary school gym, but came with its own set of issues.
Our house — a hunting camp years ago that we’ve gradually renovated — is not logistically suited to having firewood anywhere convenient, hence the basement, which is dark even during the day. Coupled with what I thought was an exorbitant price to pay for a flashlight, I find myself descending the creaky stairs immersed in mineshaft cold and eerie blackness save for a disc of illumination hardly larger than a match would provide, barely enough to read.
And read we did, well into the night, classic literature for me: “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” by James Joyce, left unbrowsed since freshman year of college but for some reason ripe for revisiting.
The two things immediately wrong with this scenario were that my perceived “late into the night” turned out to be 6:45 p.m. — forgetting momentarily at this time of year darkness arrives midafternoon on cloudy days, and Joyce was so miserably steeped in his Irish Catholic boyhood that one of the few readily comprehensible sections of the book was a 13-page dissertation on hell, which as the dwindling fire signaled another trip to the basement, didn’t sound all that bad. At least it was warm.
Sitting around, swapping holiday stories in the glow of candles, oil lamps and firelight takes a bit of the edge off, briefly easing anxiety until you walk 10 feet in any direction. With the outside temperature pushing zero, the wind still howling and the exterior creaking, the house isn’t feeling so impermeable. With no sun to speak of for several days, anywhere other than directly in front of the stove is cold, exacerbated by a deepening darkness that sharpens the illusion of the walls gradually closing in around us.
I soon find out we’re not alone in that regard.
During several trips in search of a cell signal, I come upon two yearling loons in the ever-dwindling open water of Number 10 Pond, facing a far more desperate future than being unable to scroll the internet or crank up the thermostat. An hour later, their plight crystallizes as I take a frigid walk past another pond less than a half-mile away with more open water and one of the neighborhood eagles keeping sentry high above the fishing access.
Knowing the pond would ice over in a day or two and baldy would be seeking sustenance elsewhere prompts me to make a couple of inquiries, hopefully setting the wheels in motion for a loon liberation.
(Update — hours before a planned rescue mission, the remaining loon, weakened and vulnerable, was taken by an eagle.)
I learn that these are not the only loons in the area in the same fix and that they do not necessarily need a 100-yard expanse of water to hit the sky, as I had previously believed. They can achieve liftoff from a much smaller space. I watch one try repeatedly to leave, but missing his takeoff for parts unknown. But by midweek, plans are in the works to provide some human assistance for his still stranded buddy to do the same.
While we weren’t able to fly south, we were luckier than lots of others. Our power sprang back to life late Christmas Eve and we were able to shift plans with family and friends to the next couple of days as sleep-deprived linesmen continued struggling to reconnect customers with speculation that having everyone back on line might take the rest of the week.
This time between Christmas and New Year’s is back to tranquil, perfect for reflecting on the recent past or looking to begin a new chapter in the coming year.
While I don’t generally make resolutions, several days without endless fonts of mostly useless information at my fingertips got me thinking about maybe fabricating a couple — for conversation’s sake, if I had one of my grudgingly sociable moments at an party invitation that I’d probably decline, but better safe than sorry. I decided to lie, outlining select items from my daily routine that would sound like fine resolutions if I didn’t already do them.
This little subterfuge makes me feel way better about myself than it should. I wouldn’t brag or overemphasize my expected achievements, which would easily pass for humility, always a good look. Speak softly but carry a big shtick.
“Oh, did I tell you, I’m reading James Joyce?”
