Powerless

Went out for what I was expecting to be a short lunchtime geocaching break on Thursday.

After a 20 min drive there I enjoyed a pleasant walk around the park, though the storm was building up and I was walking more and more bent over into the wind. I was hit by several small flying branches, but nothing more serious. Found the cache easily enough and wanted to explore further, but gave up in the end as the storm really was brewing.

On my drive back home I saw no fewer than four different large trees that had come crashing down across roads that I'd driven along just an hour earlier. Rather a sobering thought, which I had plenty of time to ponder as I kept getting stuck in queues and trying different detours to get around the blockages. Frustrating how powerless you feel when nature unleashes this sort of disruption with such apparent ease. (Shocked by the news later in the day of how many people had been killed and how much damage had been done.)

Finally got home to a power cut, which continued for several days. This was when I really did feel powerless. When this happens in the short, cold winter days, so much of what you take for granted is removed, abruptly and completely. Cut off from all means of communication apart from the phone, no-one can give you any real idea of when you might get power back again.

It's amazing how fast you restructure your whole day around daylight hours, and focus entirely on the basics of heat, light and food, discarding all the other niceties. Thankfully we have camping gear, and there is the initial novelty to living by candlelight, so it was still fun in a way.

Ironically enough I've just been really enjoying Call of the Wild by Guy Grieve, who broke away from "cubicle hell" to travel to the Alaskan wilderness, where with no experience but the endless generous support and advice of the locals he set about building himself a log cabin in the woods in order to spend the winter alone in it. (blurb: "Part Ray Mears, part Bill Bryson, Call of the Wild is the gripping story of how a mild mannered commuter struggled with the elements and himself but eventually learned the ways of the wild.") This may sound terribly macho, but in fact the appeal is not just the adventure element but also his candid honesty over his mistakes, the humourous asides, and the warmth with which he portrays the friends he makes - human and animal - and his constant longing for his family back home. Reading it by candlelight while wrapped in several layers to keep out the cold certainly added to its atmosphere, and made any problems I was suffering seem trivial by comparison.

Now of course the power is back on, and all the trouble it caused is rapidly forgotten. On with the blog, on with work...