The snow was heavy and wet, not far from slush. My wife said you shouldn’t go into the woods because the branches could break and fall but I went anyway and when I got there it was just like that, everything was breaking and falling. I wondered what would happen if I got crushed by a fallen branch. Then who’d be the fool?

I curled around the drooping trees, the sound of branches popping and crumbling, and reflected on that last walk in the woods in the snow when I was still getting high, and how that memory stuck with me. Was I still the same, a defiant child at heart?

Before our month in Scotland I said I wanted to learn all about Scotch whiskey, I’d take the whole month to do it, and my wife said I worry what that will do to your drinking. Ha! I scoffed at that but she was right again, I developed a taste for it I could not undo.

The power went out again, cut right toward the end of a work meeting like someone pulled the plug. Then it was just us and the snow and everything went quiet.

It’s funny what things people shop for when the power goes out. During Covid it was all about toilet paper, the top concern for the whole human race. We bought a casket-style freezer to load up on meat, caveman style. That and a lot of soap.

Without access to the internet or WiFi I felt liberated. The kids just looked bereft, forlorn. Cut out of their feeds, they’d fall behind. They looked a bit lost. When there was intermittent service and they could scan for something, even then they looked bored. The snake of entertainment choked on its own tail. They were beyond the age of sleds or building a snowman. Old before their time.

Me I checked how much gas we had left for the generator and ran out for batteries and strawberry Pop-Tarts, a baguette. Took a bath and then a nap. Lit a fire and for the longest time I just sat there watching the snow fall. They said it would turn to rain but it never did. Relieved by the burden of connectivity and with no movies to stream or apps to check I just watched the flames lick the logs and the pattern of snow unfold like static. It flickered like a beaded curtain, never quite resolved. Confined then to the two hundred-some downloaded records in my Spotify library and what limited power we had from the generator, enough to run the fridge, the fan for the wood stove, a few outlets.

There were a lot of things I was good at but some, not so much. Like working with knots or mechanical objects or tools. And not being good with knots does not bode well for a mountaineer. So I worked around it. My wife was bad with her left and right when giving directions. Some childhood thing jarred her in that development phase to where she now doubts her first instinct and chooses the wrong option every time when pressed. But she has many strengths: loving, kind-hearted, much smarter and more responsible than me, funny, compassionate, caring, good at fixing things. Me, I cook.

In the morning the power was back and I wanted to use my new snowshoes so I went to Cougar Mountain. There were some leaning and fallen trees, a few branches cracking, but the forest was otherwise quiet from the heavy snow that stifled all sound. As I neared Shy Bear Pass the flakes got bigger and flakier and there was just the sound of water running and a few birds peeping, my snow shoes clomping along.

A couple big branches fell not far from me, creating a mist of snow and a heavy thump when the branches hit the ground. Each had fallen in the exact spot where I was walking about a minute before I got there and that felt ominous.

I hurried down the mountain which was hard with my snowshoes and the fallen or drooping trees in my path. And often I got snow down my back as I twisted or bent under limbs weighted down by it. I was cold and wet. My glasses fogged up with nothing dry on my person to clean them.

I imagined some of the playful birds nearby were part of a Disney film and maybe they’d escort me to safety. But as I got lower and more of the forest seemed to crumble it felt more like the end of an action film where everything is disintegrating and the hero is trying to escape before the whole world ends. I pictured myself back home in the loving warmth of my family with the wood stove going and a bowl of leftover beans and rice, crumbled tortilla chips and a broken piece of bacon.

I dried out my things and toweled myself off and later took the kids out for ice cream. You lose power and regain it in ways you didn’t expect. Now all the snow was melting and the drooping shrubs were lifting themselves back up, more green than ever. Some plume of chimney smoke like an old man’s pipe. Me getting my boots on and heading back out again.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, mindfulness, pacific northwest, spirituality