DARK ROOMS are full of surprises. A week now among stacked dirty dishes, living by candlelight, encountering unseeable little snowmelt puddles. Nobody mentions this sensation, that the kerosene flame, erratic throbbing strobe in the room, might be depositing its mist of greasy soot everywhere, even on our tongues. Dishwasher forbidden. Washing machine forbidden. Microwave forbidden. Space heater, at 1500 watts, of course out of the question. If you really must rinse a coffee spoon, do it fast and do it under only the briefest, thinnest strand of water.
Typing in the glow of a screen, I'm asking How many kilowatt-hours does a fridge use in a 24-hr period. For the goal is to keep the big battery alive indefinitely, night after night, on its daily dose of sunshine. The big battery is proving itself able to run fridge and freezer and Wi-Fi, one lamp, one radio, and the pump at the wellhead. And charge up phones and laptops. So we're fine. This exceptional series of blizzards won't go on forever, and window-high snow will recede. But enforced stingy living turns out to feel like an interesting way of practicing for the future, at least for a bit—crash-course-style, against the day when the laws of ecology (the ones we've been flouting all these years) will turn and seriously start taxing us all.
Living under all these restrictions has a liberating aspect. The metaphor of the tennis court rectangle: a straitened playing field frees up action and innovation. (The sonnet form, too: a similar well-used metaphor.) I do so much slogging around in deep snow just shoring things up—sometimes in starlight, and sometimes under ecstatic blue skies—I'm better exercised than usual. Also, I'm putting more thought into cooking meals. Which, anyway, is always an art with economy at its heart. For deep in the neglected reaches of a cupboard are all the best, most famous inventions. Other times, in the amazing depths of silence, I find myself reading with immersion, and I can tackle harder, better books. Actually to be reading something that makes me think! I feel like I haven't thought since I was young. Who has time to think? As a matter of fact, a power outage feels like being a child again; as boring; as miscellaneous and unsorted.
These episodes are getting to be more frequent up here, and more prolonged, and more—can this be it?— educative. For planet-health alarmists, who as this county-wide nonfunctioning of every cash register, every freezer case, bank ATMs, most landlines, all roads, along with the paralyzed incompetence of the county's snowplow crews and utility repair people. What's exciting, essentially, is being cut off from the economy. The economy is really a mixed blessing; I'd already, for years now, been somewhat trying to circumvent the economy. Now this is the silence of the big engine's shutdown. Interesting to wake up to each morning.
