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Living on the mountain, one has no choice but to pay attention to the currents of nature. Important messages seep up from the ground, press in on air currents. By the time the weather report called for snow that February, I'd already known for days that something big was coming. It was just a matter of verification at that point.
It'd already been a hard season. I was still cleaning up the windfall from a horrible storm that had kicked the winter off in November. Being a small homestead, I lacked large tools like a tractor or a chainsaw, so I'd been chopping tree bits up with handsaws and a Collins axe in my spare moments all winter long. The burn piles - there were three of them - had reached intimidating heights and I wasn't sure how safe it'd be to burn them come spring.
When the air changed and brought that unmistakable feeling of impending doom, I stopped my clearing efforts and drove to town for an extra load of food and a bottle of Jameson. The shelves were still full; nobody else seemed to have felt the warnings yet. It wasn't until two days later that the forecast called for snow. How people could have ignored it by then is beyond me, but they did. I was hunkered down and smug when the first flakes fell, but I heard about the rushes for supplies that marked the first hours of what people half-jokingly referred to as Snowmageddon.
That first night was a mix of magic and the kind of awe a trainwreck causes. My little farm got more than two feet of accumulation that night. My dogs leapt through it like ale-addled fairies the next morning, and I used their tracks to help my cumbersome bipedal self break paths through the snow. The sheep were safely in the shed, the chickens were sullen in their coop, the ducks equally as sullen under the porch. I spent the morning shoveling a pathway from the coop to the back porch so they could come out if they wanted, but none did. I set out grain, hay, and bucket warmers. I crossed my fingers that we wouldn't lose power.
No one could get up my long, winding driveway to clear the snow off my roof, so I had to trust its steepness for my safety. I tried very hard not to notice the way its lines curved ever so slightly under all that weight. Or maybe I just imagined it. As the week wore on and the snow kept falling, I did my best to keep to the kind of busywork that distracts one from such thoughts. I designed and wove chokers for my lovers out of brass and rose gold, finished a copper bracelet for a friend. I drank whiskey. The dread kept building.
The roof on the shed failed; I moved the sheep into the garage. The neighborhood bobcat got desperate a few nights in and had already slaughtered three chickens when my dogs and I burst out the back door to chase it off. The snow was so deep that it stood on its hind legs to turn around before it ran. It was tall enough to look me in the eyes as it did. My heart ached with its beauty and I waded through hip-deep snow to leave the dead chickens outside my yard, where it could return to them later. No use wasting.
The neighbor finally managed to get his tractor up the driveway, but his plow blade wasn't able to remove enough snow for my CR-V to get traction. Instead, we chained my car to his tractor and dragged it to the part of the driveway that's fairly straight and level. I went to town for the first time in over a week, the undercarriage of my car grinding snow for miles until I reached the part of the road that actually gets plowed.
The next day, the forecast called for snow again. I walked outside, looked at the pile on the roof, and knew in my bones it wouldn't hold under more. Hopelessness and panic warred in my chest, but all I could do was go inside and make the morning's coffee. Mulling over it, I was suddenly struck with a desire to perform a ritual. I'd been studying under a branch of neopaganism that discouraged interaction with the larger spirits of chaos and destructiveness, but if there was ever a time to appeal directly to them, this seemed like it. I sat down at my laptop and a cry to the Outsiders flowed from my fingers. The work swelled in me like a bubble, and without thinking much about it, I grabbed supplies and kindling to take to the altar I'd built at the center of the property.
It took an enormous amount of effort to get down the hill with my arms full, since even the dogs hadn't gone that far from the house since the first snowfall. My altar didn't make so much as a lump in the drifts. I eyeballed its location using the trees as guides and stomped the snow down until I found the burning bowl. Once the fire was lit, I knelt and threw myself at the mercy of the powers that be:
The time of resting is passing
the time of planting approaches.
My fields lie barren among the unmarked lands
the wind bears down fiercely and the snows fall relentlessly.
From these ambivalent wild spirits
I ask a boon.
I, small and at your whim, will make an offering
to assuage you Outsiders
to appease you and please you
and win from you grudging consent
to spare my mountain world,
my home, my safety, my kin, our fields
above the great surrounding sea.
I offer this wine, red as blood
this sweet tobacco, and sage grown by my hand.
Please calm your fury
spare my shelter
release my land.
And there I was, kneeling by coals and a red stain in the snow when I realized I could feel spring seeping up through the ground, soaking my jeans along with the melting snow. I could smell it in the air. Was the offering even necessary? All I knew is that the building dread dissipated all at once. My inclination was to distrust the feeling, but my hope was kindled.
I didn't check the forecast till the next day, I was so scared of being wrong. But when I finally did, all indication of snowfall had dropped off. The thaw, when it came, happened so gradually that the expected landslides never occurred. I knew the grip of the storm was finally failing when the snow on the roof started sliding off in sheets, the grinding of it so loud and sudden that I leapt from my seat in terror. The accumulation lingered for another month, how could it not? But the hens started laying right around the time the roof shrugged the snow off. They could feel spring coming, too.
Huddled inside this entire experience, I finally faced the fact that my farming dreams had become nightmares, my financial situation was unsustainable, and it was time to leave the beloved home I'd been convinced I'd grow old in. The driveway finally cleared enough to use about a week before we had to drive the moving van up it.
I was gone by April.
It'd already been a hard season. I was still cleaning up the windfall from a horrible storm that had kicked the winter off in November. Being a small homestead, I lacked large tools like a tractor or a chainsaw, so I'd been chopping tree bits up with handsaws and a Collins axe in my spare moments all winter long. The burn piles - there were three of them - had reached intimidating heights and I wasn't sure how safe it'd be to burn them come spring.
When the air changed and brought that unmistakable feeling of impending doom, I stopped my clearing efforts and drove to town for an extra load of food and a bottle of Jameson. The shelves were still full; nobody else seemed to have felt the warnings yet. It wasn't until two days later that the forecast called for snow. How people could have ignored it by then is beyond me, but they did. I was hunkered down and smug when the first flakes fell, but I heard about the rushes for supplies that marked the first hours of what people half-jokingly referred to as Snowmageddon.
That first night was a mix of magic and the kind of awe a trainwreck causes. My little farm got more than two feet of accumulation that night. My dogs leapt through it like ale-addled fairies the next morning, and I used their tracks to help my cumbersome bipedal self break paths through the snow. The sheep were safely in the shed, the chickens were sullen in their coop, the ducks equally as sullen under the porch. I spent the morning shoveling a pathway from the coop to the back porch so they could come out if they wanted, but none did. I set out grain, hay, and bucket warmers. I crossed my fingers that we wouldn't lose power.
No one could get up my long, winding driveway to clear the snow off my roof, so I had to trust its steepness for my safety. I tried very hard not to notice the way its lines curved ever so slightly under all that weight. Or maybe I just imagined it. As the week wore on and the snow kept falling, I did my best to keep to the kind of busywork that distracts one from such thoughts. I designed and wove chokers for my lovers out of brass and rose gold, finished a copper bracelet for a friend. I drank whiskey. The dread kept building.
The roof on the shed failed; I moved the sheep into the garage. The neighborhood bobcat got desperate a few nights in and had already slaughtered three chickens when my dogs and I burst out the back door to chase it off. The snow was so deep that it stood on its hind legs to turn around before it ran. It was tall enough to look me in the eyes as it did. My heart ached with its beauty and I waded through hip-deep snow to leave the dead chickens outside my yard, where it could return to them later. No use wasting.
The neighbor finally managed to get his tractor up the driveway, but his plow blade wasn't able to remove enough snow for my CR-V to get traction. Instead, we chained my car to his tractor and dragged it to the part of the driveway that's fairly straight and level. I went to town for the first time in over a week, the undercarriage of my car grinding snow for miles until I reached the part of the road that actually gets plowed.
The next day, the forecast called for snow again. I walked outside, looked at the pile on the roof, and knew in my bones it wouldn't hold under more. Hopelessness and panic warred in my chest, but all I could do was go inside and make the morning's coffee. Mulling over it, I was suddenly struck with a desire to perform a ritual. I'd been studying under a branch of neopaganism that discouraged interaction with the larger spirits of chaos and destructiveness, but if there was ever a time to appeal directly to them, this seemed like it. I sat down at my laptop and a cry to the Outsiders flowed from my fingers. The work swelled in me like a bubble, and without thinking much about it, I grabbed supplies and kindling to take to the altar I'd built at the center of the property.
It took an enormous amount of effort to get down the hill with my arms full, since even the dogs hadn't gone that far from the house since the first snowfall. My altar didn't make so much as a lump in the drifts. I eyeballed its location using the trees as guides and stomped the snow down until I found the burning bowl. Once the fire was lit, I knelt and threw myself at the mercy of the powers that be:
The time of resting is passing
the time of planting approaches.
My fields lie barren among the unmarked lands
the wind bears down fiercely and the snows fall relentlessly.
From these ambivalent wild spirits
I ask a boon.
I, small and at your whim, will make an offering
to assuage you Outsiders
to appease you and please you
and win from you grudging consent
to spare my mountain world,
my home, my safety, my kin, our fields
above the great surrounding sea.
I offer this wine, red as blood
this sweet tobacco, and sage grown by my hand.
Please calm your fury
spare my shelter
release my land.
And there I was, kneeling by coals and a red stain in the snow when I realized I could feel spring seeping up through the ground, soaking my jeans along with the melting snow. I could smell it in the air. Was the offering even necessary? All I knew is that the building dread dissipated all at once. My inclination was to distrust the feeling, but my hope was kindled.
I didn't check the forecast till the next day, I was so scared of being wrong. But when I finally did, all indication of snowfall had dropped off. The thaw, when it came, happened so gradually that the expected landslides never occurred. I knew the grip of the storm was finally failing when the snow on the roof started sliding off in sheets, the grinding of it so loud and sudden that I leapt from my seat in terror. The accumulation lingered for another month, how could it not? But the hens started laying right around the time the roof shrugged the snow off. They could feel spring coming, too.
Huddled inside this entire experience, I finally faced the fact that my farming dreams had become nightmares, my financial situation was unsustainable, and it was time to leave the beloved home I'd been convinced I'd grow old in. The driveway finally cleared enough to use about a week before we had to drive the moving van up it.
I was gone by April.
