Here is a piece of writing that I did for my writing class. Read on...
Stormy Weather
The lights went out at 8:30 pm on a
Tuesday night last spring. They stayed out until 12:50 a.m. Thursday. Thunder,
lightning, strong winds and lots of rain invaded our space and surrounded me in
my small city home. Occasionally a crash and bang nearby assaulted my senses,
but it didn’t bring any tree limbs onto the small house.
The disruption lasted for a long time. Sleep
was nearly impossible that night. Weather reports on television had told us we
would get a storm, and they were right. It was very black everywhere. I found
two flashlights and my camping lantern in the basement, and they provided a
small amount of lighting in my living area.
Wow. No television, no radio, no
electronics except a cell phone. And tablet.
Probably I could have used the Internet via phone, but I didn’t try. I sat and looked
at a book with the help of a flashlight. I was alone in the darkness. This was
in the city, not in the woods.
What was a person to do? I have been a
camper for many years, but now I was not in the woods. I opened the book and
tried to read. Maybe a novel would have been a better choice, but this book was
about food politics. With flashes and crashes invading my concentration, it was
not interesting.
Ok. How about audio? The tablet was
somewhere in the darkness. My subscription to Audible might work. The next hour
and a half found me absorbed in Great Expectations. Listening to Pip
tell his story with Miss Havisham in the background occupied my time until
10:30 pm. Then finally sleep.
This was not camping. It was darkly quiet
and brightly noisy, in the city with thousands of people nearby, all in the
black night. They were there; I was here.
Daytime arrived with the storm gone but still
no electricity. That was better, but the outage prevented work around the house
including issues with cooking and dirty laundry. Today’s living requires electric
power. Just manage, I told myself all day; eat something from the dark
refrigerator without cooking. Find some food in the cupboard. I asked the
neighbor to open my garage door manually to enable use of the car. That helped.
I could go somewhere.
How much do we assume in our daily lives
with power enabling living? Television tells us what is going on. We have
electric stoves, microwave ovens, vacuum cleaners and plenty more. It’s not the
campground. At least we had running water. Scary stormy nights will disturb us,
but light awaits at the end of the tunnel, whether from the sun or human technology.
Then, when June came, I went camping in
the woods of Washington Island and spent the night in a cabin during a tornado.
No damage for me. What’s next?
