Brad was panting and sweating inside his jacket by the time he’d parked the snowmobile on the front porch. He made several attempts, packing down the drifts with each pass, before he could get the snowmobile up the stairs. He left the snowmobile with the tracks facing out towards the front yard while the snow continued to fall.
Back in the living room, the wood stove made quick work of melting the snow from Brad’s clothes. His short trip around the house convinced him that waiting for the snowfall to end was the right plan. The blowing and falling snow reduced visibility to just a few paces. While he waited, Brad busied himself with the fire. He got his best snow shovel from the wall of his ruined garage, pausing briefly to watch the snow filter in through the gaping hole in the roof. It took the better part of an hour for Brad to carve out a path from the laundry room door over to the wood pile. By the time he reached the stack of wood, inches accumulated at the start of his path.
He filled the wood rack in the living room and then stacked even more firewood next to the chimney. Water pooled on the tiles as the snow melted off the wood. Brad rested around dusk. Every hour throughout the night, Brad woke up to check the snow. He wanted to leave as soon as it abated, but it came down strong all night. Dawn filtered in slowly through the thick clouds. Brad shoveled the path to the woodpile several more times. He didn’t anticipate sticking around long enough to need much more firewood, but it gave him something to do. The snow on either side of his path was now piled up to shoulder height. He tossed each shovelful higher than the last. Brad’s shoulders ached with each shovelful.
Brad ate light meals next to the warm wood stove. He melted snow in buckets next to the stove, so he could fill the toilet tank. His water came from a well, so with no power, he needed to supply the toilet manually.
Around noon, Brad felt trapped inside his dark living room. He strapped on his backpack and decided to take his chances with the low visibility.
The snow mounded around the front porch so he could drive his snowmobile right from the porch onto the snow. His heavy machine packed down the powder, but it stayed afloat on the surface as long as he kept his speed up. Brad navigated to the end of the driveway mostly by memory. He could barely make out the trees on either side of the path, but he knew the twists and turns well enough to stay out of the woods.
The road sat buried—unplowed and untraveled. Brad tried to guide the snowmobile to the widest expanse ahead, but soon found himself riding down the sloping shoulder into a gully. He fought the machine’s tilt, leaning far out to the side, to keep it from rolling him off. Brad followed the shoulder for a several slow minutes, thinking he could use the angle as a guide, but soon found himself plunging forward into another gully. It didn’t make sense to him—he couldn’t imagine how the road could turn ninety degrees.
Brad turned right and continued until the new gully veered even further right. That’s when Brad figured out he was way off course. He turned his snowmobile around in a tight loop and backtracked to his own driveway. An hour on the machine, and he found himself no farther than the end of his driveway. Brad goosed the snowmobile and fled back to his house, convinced again he would have to wait for the heavy snowfall to end before he could escape his property and make his way to town.
Dear Karen,
This snow is unbelievable. It’s still coming down. There has to be at least six feet of snow out there now and it’s still falling. I’ve still got the laundry room door cleared, and I’ve moved a lot of wood into the laundry room. If you thought it looked cluttered before, you should see it now. It’s stacked from end to end with firewood.
I broke the dryer, too. Not that it was very useful since the power’s been out, but it was a bit of a crisis for a few minutes. I came in through the door with a sling full of wood, and one of the big pieces slipped out. It dropped straight on the section of gas line that comes up through the floor and goes to the dryer. It probably would have been fine, if I’d left it alone, but I thought I could un-crimp the copper tubing. When I tried to bend it back into place, the pipe split and propane started to flood the room. I shut the door to the living room pretty quick—I didn’t want gas to get to the wood stove—and opened the back door. But with five feet of snow, getting to the propane tank was impossible. The pipe split before the cutoff valve, so I didn’t have any way of shutting it off except out at the tank.
I couldn’t climb through the snow from the laundry room door, and I didn’t want to let the laundry room fill up with gas while I shoveled my way around, so I wrapped the pipe with some tape and dug my way out through the kitchen window. The snow already covered the lower half of the window in there. You know how the snow slides down from the corner of the house where the two roofs meet in a valley? Well all the snow sloughed off the roof and collected there. It didn’t take me long to dig down to the tank though. I ended up hanging out of the window far enough to reach down to the cutoff valve. So the stove is out of commission too until I re-plumb the gas line for the stove. I think I can just figure out a way to take off the “T” fitting where it splits to go to the dryer, but I’m a little nervous about working with gas lines. Meanwhile, I’ve been doing all my cooking on the wood stove. It’s fun this way—I have to admit—more like camping.
I’m also keeping a ramp clear for the snowmobile so I’ll be able to use it when the snow stops. Actually, it’s easier than I thought it would be. I just go out every hour and pack down the ramp leading from the front porch so I can get it up to the level of the snow. I took down some of the plywood from the windows and jammed it in between the railing and the snow bank to keep the front porch from filling up with snow. It’s drifting pretty deep up there. Once it gets to the roofline, I think the porch will become like a cave and I won’t have to worry about so much snow blowing in down the ramp.
You get into a place where you’re just reacting to the latest disaster, and figuring out how to survive. It rarely occurs to me to even wonder how this could be happening. It seems like ever since this summer, I’ve just dealt whatever comes along and adapted to it. Makes me think, what other things could I have adjusted to? Horses, kids, dinner parties, dancing—none of those could possibly be as weird as what I’ve been dealing with, and yet I’m perfectly able to roll with these changes, so why not those? I guess it’s just because I wasn’t offered a choice by the casual government guys. They just showed up and took me prisoner. Same with the snow. Anyway, for the millionth time, I’m sorry. I hope you know.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Maine / New Hampshire Border - FALL
ROBBY SLOWED TO a stop on the highway with the green metal bridge crouching before him. The road deck stood high above the banks of the river, so big ships could navigate the river below. The tree tops were below Robby on either side. Bridges made him nervous, he decided. Heights made him nervous now too, although they never did before. He inched the vehicle forward until he passed under the big green bridge trusses.
He saw few cars on the road, but with the metal guardrails on either side hemming the wrecks in, they forced him to weave around. With sixty miles under his belt, Robby felt pretty good about the SUV. He’d allowed himself to ramp up to almost fifty miles per hour on the highway. Now, with only thin rails between him and the drop into cold Piscataqua river, ten miles an hour seemed too fast. Robby opened his window a few inches. The cold air felt good on his sweaty brow. Robby gripped the wheel tighter.