Sunday morning, I woke at 1:30 a.m. - something was wrong. I got out of bed and found my dripping faucet was not dripping anymore. Oh no! I turned it on full blast, and the water drooled. The freeze was harder than I expected. I should have left a stream running, but I left a drip and now my pipes were frozen.
It was 27 degrees and snowing and an ice storm was on the way. I won't be able to get out of here, until Tuesday or Wednesday, so I had to make do.
To keep my drool going, I opened the bathroom and kitchen faucets full blast and started filling containers. I started heating water on the stove and ran out of propane. I'd run an extra line in from the junction box to power a second space heater and dang, it blew the circuit. Its only 50 feet to the junction box, but it was dark, snowing, and 27 degrees, so I closed off the living space which one heater heats just fine.
Around four o'clock that afternoon, my mountain rescue team (aka as daughter and son-in-law) arrived and switched my propane tanks around, and I could cook again. We tried to unfreeze those pipes with warm water, but they are frozen solid and only the sun can rescue me. The weatherman says, a few hours of sun on Tuesday - maybe.
My rescue team headed home and I was watching them climb the mountain, and thinking how cute they were in their winter attire, when the ice storm hit. I watched the tree limbs bend under the weight of the ice, all the way to the ground. Everything sparkled, like millions of diamonds all around me; it was dazzling.
My kids called, maybe I should come up to the big house for the night. Nope, I'm fine down here. Its a pain to maintain, but my year of trailer life has been fun for me. Between dry camping while we built the big house, to trailer life while we build my little house, we will never run out of stories to tell. Anyone who comes from a storytelling family knows how much stories mean to us.
By nightfall, icicles were dripping off the trees. The ice storm was over, but not the magic.
Its Monday morning, the drool is still drooling and its still dark outside, when I sit down to read Super Mrs. C's musings about Mother Nature.
They say, trees and plants communicate hundreds of miles underground through their root systems - and I believe them. They say elephants communicate across hundreds of miles by stomping their feet on the ground - and I believe them too. I believe them, because Mother Nature has always taken care of me.
Mother Nature flooded our entire canyon, throwing trees, boulders, homes, roads and soil around like Legos and trapped us for fourteen days without phone, electricity, or water - the only way out was on horseback. Mother Nature dumped six feet of snow on our mountain and trapped us for eleven days inside our cabin. Mother Nature flew a tornado through our woods, throwing full grown trees around like sticks and trees fell like dominos, and three years later, we are still cleaning up.
I don't care what anyone says, Mrs. C heard me stomping and wrote this story for me. Right now, Washington DC has it much worse than we do in Kentucky and somehow I think that's Mother Nature style, poetic justice.
