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Mary's Farm: The Ice Storm
Living without power
by Edie Clark
SLIDE SHOW: Ice Storm Photos
At one o'clock in the morning on December 12, 2008, I woke to a still darkness and the instinctual knowledge that the power was out.
I stoked the stove and returned to bed. In the morning, still dark, I lit candles and brought my hand-cranked radio down off the shelf. The radio reported that 400,000 New Hampshire households were without power, virtually the entire state.
A power company official used the apt analogy of a tree to relay the news of when we could expect our power to be restored: "There's the trunk, the branches, the limbs, and then the twigs. If you live in an outlying area, you're a twig." I knew it would be a long wait.
Morning light revealed my car, every tree, every branch, every blade of grass imprisoned in ice. Icicles hung from branches and power lines like prisms from a chandelier. The power and phone lines that connected my house to the utility pole on the road lay on the ground across my driveway.
I pulled on my ice creepers and set forth across the newly Arctic landscape, everything coated in ice-white. I traveled about on my tundra, every step resounding, careful to avoid the wooded areas, where trees were falling, the sound of gunshots filling the air.
It was a completely new world. Trees bowed, trees broken. Limbs lay about as if felled by a tornado. On the icy sheath I crept out onto the road. I could see tree after tree lying in the way. I was completely cut off. From where I stood, it looked like Armageddon.
For two days, I sat at my kitchen table and watched out the big window that faces the mountain. Rain hammered the house, but the temperature stayed at 30 degrees. Every 10 minutes or so, a branch or a tree snapped, giving that dreaded sharp crack, and then shattering on the ground like broken glass on a concrete floor. I felt like a captain on the bridge of a ship keeping watch in a big storm. Visibility was poor, navigation pointless.
On the second evening, the rain ended and a full moon rose, lighting up the crystalline world like a stage set for Fantasia. I strapped on my ice cleats and walked out into the welcome, almost blinding, light. The shortest day of the year was only a week away, and the darkness brought on by the storm had felt punitive. The beauty of this ice-covered world seemed magical, suspending reality.
Driving was a unique experience, slaloming around felled trees, broken telephone poles, and downed wires. The tops of many trees had snapped off, leaving naked trunks standing like so many raised swords in the forest. Some had broken in two like twigs. Enormous splinters stabbed the ground like javelins thrown. Of all weather phenomena, ice is the most serenely destructive. No shrill wind, no thunder or lightning or shuddering of the earth. Just silence, but for the piercing reports of the breaking trees.
On the main highway, I saw a tractor trailer parked by the side of the road, its driver selling generators out of the back like a street vendor. When I reached the town of Peterborough, I found what looked like an abandoned village--stores dark, few cars parked on the street.
It turned out that some stores were open and customers could come in, using flashlights to scan the aisles and cash to purchase their items. At the post office, workers sorted mail in their heavy coats by the light of big flashlights. The impression of End Times continued.
Reader Comments
Comment from Sheila Burns on November 17, 2009
Such a good story, the reality of the description was wonderful. Here in West Virginia, we have had a a few of these ice/snow storms and I remember so much of this story that happened to us. Thank you.
Comment from Dave Vaughan on December 1, 2009
After the storm stopped we drove around to survey the damage. I had never seen anything like it. We we're relieved and grateful when on are way back home we saw utility trucks from Indiana. They must have driven all night to get here and then went right to work. Over the next several days we were invaded by an army of linemen fro all over the eastern half of the country. Many missed Christmas at home to help return us to normal. We will be forever grateful to them.
Comment from Sandra McMillin on December 2, 2009
I happened to be visiting at my daughters home in southern MA on the RI border where there was snow but no ice and no power outage. Just like the Blizzard of '78 (the year we moved to Massachusetts) I missed it again!
Comment from Janet K. Irwin on December 4, 2009
As next week approaches I seek out photo's of our front yard prior to the storm of all ice storms. I remember the large maple that shaded countless day care children who spent their days with us over the years. I remember the piņatas hung from that tree and broken and share on Halloween or it's eve. I remember the pine cones the whole family had to pick up from the two pines the maple rendered unable to be saved when it came crashing down in waves of gigantic limbs upon them.
I also remember the sense of true community as we all pitched in to share power leads with neighbors who were taking in alarming amounts of water when their sumps stopped pumping.
I now spend my evenings at the kitchen sink gazing back into my neighborhood and not seeing 1/3 of the canopy of treetops that I use to see.
Mother nature cleaned house that one day last December. Our community is all cleaned up now and we've become collectively more gratetful for our awesome town provided services , those provided by the numerous power company linemen and women and for the gift of neighbors who really care about each other.
Comment from Willadean Heldenbrand on December 9, 2009
Here in southwest Missouri we have our share of ice storms. Some adapt, some don't to the lack of power. Sometimes power is out only a few hours, for others as much as three weeks. Kerocene heaters, oil lamps, candles, barbecue grills (out doors only), fireplaces and wood stoves are used more than generators. We learn how it was for the generations before us how life really was for them. We read, we play card games, board games and how to walk very carefully on the ice. We break ice in the ponds for the livestock and check on neighbors. We eat out of our freezers and share with friends who don't have freezers just to use it up before the food spoils. All the while people are working around the clock to get the power back on.
Comment from BARBARA MULLAN on December 28, 2009
As hard as it is for people to go without power, I actually think it is good for this younger generation to experience life without "all the modern conveniences" they have come to rely upon every day. So many from this younger generation do not even realize how to use a telephone book any more, that is how techno they have become. They rely on all their gadgets to get them through every aspect of their lives, but when an event such as an Ice Storm shuts down the main infrastructure and they find they now have to do for themselves, they are helpless. It's nice to have modern convenience, but we must never loose our perspective and forget how things are truly done the REAL WAY in life.
Comment from on January 5, 2010
I felt almost a kinship with you as I read the story: having had to go "powerless" after Hurricane Ike for 15 days I knew just what you had gone through. I learned a lot about myself, though, in those 15 days, like how innovative I could be with no power and no water (for the first week). I re-discovered my cast iron skillets as I invented new recipes from limited food supplies, and cooked on my (thank God!) propane grill! While other people ran generators, I camped out under the window so that the cool night air would fall on me and I could get a (relatively) long night's sleep (total darkness by 9 PM!).
(I'm a Damned Yankee living down here in Texas for almost 21 years.)
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