Trolls

That was interesting. A little after 7 AM yesterday, the power finally went out for good after a half a dozen on/off/on episodes that prompted me to shut down the computer for safety.

We got out the candles and flashlights. It’s really quite dark at that hour; 7:30. And we listened to the battery powered police scanner unit. The news wasn’t good. Trees down. Power poles down. Power lines across roadways. Trees falling into homes. On and on it went. A litany of disaster. And the wind blew.

We tried reading, but the candle light was less than satisfactory. We played solitaire with real cards on the kitchen table. We made tea and hot chocolate with water heated on the woodstove. The local radio stations were off the air so we were stuck with scanner news, where you only hear half of a conversation. And the wind blew.

Sometime around 11, the wind peaked and a 30’ section of our fence blew over, falling into the roses. That was it. We felt somewhat blessed by that. There were plenty of major disasters that day on the Planet Orland, but we only had to deal with a broken fence. We were warm and safe inside a substantial house.

By noon, the wind had died down to a mild roar and the rain continued to fall. Now we began to guess as to when the power would come back. I predicted 10 minutes to 5 and was rewarded (Yes!) when it came back on at 5.

I’ve looked at the weather forecast for today, tomorrow and the rest of the week. Rain and more wind, but nothing like yesterday. The area record was a 67 mph wind gust in Red Bluff and I saw that the Corning station recorded a 61 mph gust. This morning, the best that Corning has come up with is a mere 23 mph gust.

And we’re still warm and secure. But, here on the Planet Orland, there are people that ‘normally’ live under a bridge on 99W. I’m sure they moved when the water in the creek rose, but where are they now?

Something odd happens when our normal world is altered for just a brief span of time. Without electricity, we begin to wonder how we could live without it. We knew that the power was going to come back on. But, what if it didn’t? How would we cope? I guess we could always ask the people that live under the bridge.