Icebound

December 1, 2006

A week ago, sixty-degree weather gave us a day-after-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving with my family with open doors and a fire pit. Today, the temperature had dropped about fifty degrees and we were challenged to kick our survival skills into gear.

It is a cloudy, misty evening, and as it turns colder the streets begin to ice. My six-month-old Shepadoodle, Izzie, is delighted to chase and bite frozen leaves when I take her out to do her business, and not having been acquainted with ice before, she rabbit-hops from place to place, delightedly exploring. This would have been fine if I had not put a doggie sweatshirt, hooded and gray, on her to keep her from getting wet, thereby saving me the trouble of wiping down an entire dog. Her front legs, on the rabbit-hop, became entangled in the sweatshirt. The sweatshirt, dog-head emerging from the neck, begins to roll on the ice, lumpy and trying to punch its way out. It’s like a scene out of Alien, and I finally free her from her sweatshirt and drag her home across the icy road.

Fast forward. I wake from a sound sleep. It’s ‘way too quiet, and way too dark. I get up, feeling my way to the bathroom. Two PM, the ticking battery operated clock says. Not a streetlight, not a house light: we are in blackout. I return to bed, snuggled under a down comforter, and listen anxiously to the crack and crash of tree branches coated with ice and then, heavy snow. The sound of branches bending and breaking is terrible to listen to: as my friend around the corner says, “It’s like listening to a close friend die a painful death.” We love the trees in our neighborhood, and many of them are over a hundred years old. Those of us that frequent these streets and nearby Washington Park, on foot and with our dogs, grieve for the loss of each tree.

In the morning, I wait for the city bus to go by, my signal to get up. It does not, nor do I hear cars. Seven-forty-five, and the puppy is banging her tail against her crate. We rise, Jim and I, and begin to layer on the clothing: for me, thermal undershirt, running t-shirt, heavy sweater, scarf, parka, wool socks, waterproof hiking boots. The five-year-old Poodle, Ethan, steps gingerly. He doesn’t like wet feet. The Shepadoodle goes skittering across the ice, bounding into the snow. It’s all Jim can do to hold his footing. Down the street we go, picking our way in the few tire tracks imprinted in the deep snow and the ice hidden mysteriously beneath it. The trees and power lines are encased in ice, creating a beautiful landscape out of havoc. At the end of our street, a tree branch covered in ice is draped in an arc over a small, snow-covered car. On the other side of the boulevard we live on, a branch has crashed through the back of a neighbor’s SUV. There are small twig-tops emerging from snowbanks, but when Jim goes to pick them up, he discovers that they are like bodies in an avalanche. What appears to be only a mitten is actually a dead, frozen body. What appears to be a twig is actually a huge limb, buried in the bank of snow.

Ever resourceful, I set my priorities back at the house, and go to the darkened basement with a flashlight to dig out the French press to make coffee. I use a fireplace match to light the stove, and boil water. I place a large bowl in the sink to soak dirty utensils and dishes. We can rinse them with hot water from the kettle. Jim builds a fire in the fireplace and goes out to get dry wood from under the tarp. Thankfully, our country friends have given us a huge load of seasoned red-elm, which burns long and clean and has been custom-cut for our city fireplace. The chimney sweep has recently proclaimed our fireplace one of the sturdiest he’s seen, so we feel safe building and maintaining a huge fire.

I start a pot of soup with the ham hocks Jim bought yesterday and a bag of beans. It’s a huge pot and it simmers all day. I spend the next three days delivering it to friends.
Then, because I have the ingredients and it feels right to make soup, I make a batch of pasta fagioli, adding the leftover beef braised in zinfandel from last night’s dinner.

Later that morning, I get curious and go out with a camera. Walking the Shepadoodle toward the park, I abruptly turn homeward when a branch not three feet from where I am walking cracks and falls. On the way home I see a tree limb spanning a side street. It bridges over the street, and cars are driving under it with plenty of headroom to spare.

Thirty-thousand customers are without power in the city, more in the surrounding area. Ours goes back on by 11 am, but others in the neighborhood are not as fortunate. My friends around the corner crank up the generator and won’t leave their house, so I take them coffee in a thermos and soup and check on them. There’s no internet, and no television, so I read, stir the soup, take out the dogs, clean my recipe files, read, stir the soup, take out the dogs, fold dish towels, take out the dogs, dry off the dogs, read, take out the dogs, dry off the dogs, stir the soup, etc.

On Day Two of the ice storm, I put on my sturdiest walking shoes, the Keens that were designed for boat decks and grip the ice, and pick my way down the street to the Park. Ethan wears his polar fleece dog coat – Poodles get rather soggy and dry off rather slowly, so I prefer to keep as much of him dry as possible. Remembering the dog-head sweatshirt fiasco of last night, I take the Shepadoodle naked. She dried quickly, in any case.

Our street is a disaster, snow over ice, all packed down by traffic. The park, by comparison, is plowed clean. The sun is out, and the ice on limbs shimmers. There are huge limbs broken away from ancient trees, and piles of branches at the side of the circular two-mine walk around the park. There’s a contingent of children with saucers speeding down the hill, and Ethan wants desperately to join them. The occupants of cars driving through the park laugh delightedly to see a Poodle in a coat and a scruffy large terrier-like dog, dipping her beard into the deep snow and rabbit-hopping across the ice. The small women at the end of their leashes in incidental, but manages to keep her footing.

We walk around the park a time and a half, four and a half miles, then pick our way home again. The dogs are beat and my back is throbbing. We are safe and warm and dry at our house, but the down comforter and warm Poodle on it in the bedroom lure me to bed early. Tomorrow is another day, and the weather’s not expected to get any warmer.