Sinking Ship

“Like rats fleeing a sinking ship…”

I kept thinking of that old saying the other morning.

Except I was the rat and the sinking ship I was fleeing was my very own lovely house.

(Incidentally? According to Merriam-Webster, that idiom can be traced back hundreds of years. Apparently, rats have been getting out of bad situations caused by humans for centuries now.)

The power had gone out the night before. My cheerful weather app was predicting two days of blizzard-like conditions. I remembered last year’s Snowmageddon, when the power was out for nine days.

Snow was falling steadily, adding additional inches every hour to the snow that had fallen the week before.

I decided that I didn’t want to be around to see how bad it was going to get.

I texted a friend, found a place to stay, and left.

Turns out, that was a good decision.

Because it snowed and snowed and snowed some more. Snow measured in feet, not inches.

Interstate 80, one of our main thoroughfares, was closed for days. My son missed four days of school, and his school is about 1000 feet lower in elevation than where we live.  Other nearby communities that rarely see snow had measurable accumulation and a host of  weather-related traffic accidents because of it.

Our power was out from Sunday evening until Thursday afternoon. The county did not plow the main roads in and out of our community until Thursday, either. That basically left everybody stranded. It was a difficult few days: our local Facebook group was full of pleas for help. People needed help shoveling snow and needed their driveways plowed. Some ran out of firewood. Lots of people started to run low on fuel for their generators. A woman who lived in her car in a remote area posted that she was in trouble and asked for help getting out (a team from the county Search and Rescue department brought her to warmth and safety.)

I went home for a few hours Friday, after the sun came out and the roads were plowed. It was a breathtakingly beautiful snowy day, but then I came back to Auburn to stay. Because even though the power is on, who knows how long that will last?  And also, the house is pretty chilly and there is an abundance of snow on top of my woodpile and I’m not sure how I will even start to get it off.  Also? More snow is on the way.

So I’ll stay in Auburn for a few more nights.  At this writing late Saturday evening, I-80 is closed (again) because of snow that fell today, and more snow is predicted for Sunday and into early Monday morning. It’s not a Blizzard Warning this time, just a Winter Storm Warning. That has more to do with sustained wind speeds than with the amount of snow, the forecasters say. So this time around, it’s not as windy. But we could get another foot or two of snow by early next week.

Another foot or two?

(Not sure where all of it is going to go.  Except for on top of my woodpile. It will definitely land there.)

I love where I live. I even love the snow! I am not a fan of power outages, though. Or of snow that topples trees (a big pine went down in our backyard.  Since I wasn’t there to hear it, did it make a sound?)  But tonight I am grateful. Grateful for a place to stay, for the generosity of neighbors and friends, and for the water that all this snow and rain is bringing to our drought-stricken state.

That may be the best news of all.

(Except. Did it have to come all at once?)

Sorry. Not meaning to complain. Just a little tired tonight. And wondering when I will finally be able to go home again.