Column by Hal Walter
Mountain Life -March 2006 -Colorado Central Magazine
There’s a certain sensory commotion when the power goes out, a simultaneous loss of light and sound followed by the whir of kitchen appliances coming to a stop. When you’ve lived in the mountains for any length of time, there’s also a certain automatic course of action –the initial cursing, followed by a scramble to fill every available container with drinking water before the well’s pressure tank loses force, then the search for flashlights, candles, campstove, etc.
Over the years, rural utility services being what they are, this scenario has been rehearsed many times. Some episodes are quite memorable, perhaps because of timing like the first night home from the hospital with our child, or because of duration like the time we started thinking in terms of buying a generator to keep the meat in our freezer frozen. Countless others have been completely forgotten. Sometimes power outages can be attributed to a weather event such as a heavy spring blizzard or a summer lightning storm; other times they happen on a clear, calm day.
Before cordless telephones, it was a simple matter to pick up the phone and call Sangre de Cristo Electric to report the outage. Now in the day of cordless phones, which require electricity, it’s easier to locate a cell phone than the old plug-in-the-wall type. Almost invariably you call to learn there’s been some problem with a “substation” and the lights will come back on sometime in the next few hours.
Speaking of phones, this is not to exclude telephone-service outages –I recently lost an entire day’s pay when I could not telecommute due to a dead phone line. But there’s something about the sensory aspect of losing electrical power that I find most fascinating.
On a recent Saturday evening the power went out shortly after sunset while we were preparing dinner. We have an electric range, so luckily we had already cooked the vegetables to go with a green salad and hamburgers that I intended to grill outside. In the exhilarating silence, we finished preparing the meal by candlelight as our son, nearly 2, ran around the room excitedly, as if on his first camping trip.
And indeed it was somewhat like camping. No lights, no television, no phone, no computer, no fan on the propane heater, no steady drone of refrigerator and freezer. No digital clock. As I grilled the hamburgers, checking them occasionally with a flashlight, I noticed the absence of my neighbors’ exterior lights. All the reasons I choose to live here were brought into tighter focus –silence broken only by the breeze in the trees and the hooting of owls, and the light of the moon and stars above the ambiance of man-made light.
It made me wonder why I don’t just flip the breakers in my utility room to get grounded on a more regular basis. Besides the realignment of senses, it could also reduce the power bill and keep honed those simple skills and sensibilities needed to deal with the loss of electricity.
On a recent trip to Denver I had received a big dose of sensory overload. While staying in a ritzy downtown hotel as my wife attended a job-training seminar –I was the daycare provider for our child –I could scarcely sleep for the buzz of the city outside, punctuated by fire and police sirens, helicopter fly-overs and other noisy activities.
After the first night in the hotel I peered out the eighth-floor room as the drone reached a crescendo with office workers arriving for a day of pushing paper. “So, these people must all be stupid,” I ventured as my wife prepared for her day of classes.
Of course they are, she confirmed with a nod, noting that it’s a good thing they were. Otherwise they might want to live where we do.
How different life in the city is. When at home I normally exercise by running on the dirt roads and trails around here with my burros, and moving 70-pound square-bales rather than dumbbells. Now, locked in a hotel, I ventured to the gym where I could scarcely figure out how to use the equipment but did manage to bench-press 200 pounds on a machine while my son stood mesmerized by an attractive young lady who cracked an occasional smile back at him while bounding to nowhere on a treadmill.
My physical and psychological feat in the weight room was later partially offset by a man in a coffee shop who asked if I might be the child’s grandfather. And it was further eroded when the hotel bellhop asked if I was “handicapped” after spying the upside-down baby jogger in my truck and thinking it was a wheelchair.
“Not physically,” I told him.
Somehow, it felt odd to stand in line with downtown workers at a restaurant that served up 30 different types of grilled-cheese sandwiches, something I am perfectly qualified to make in my own kitchen.
Likewise, at a Capitol Hill breakfast spot popular with the suit-dressed statehouse crowd, I was stunned to look up and find a roach on the table perched squarely before my son, looking up at him as if to say “feed me.” In order to avoid a mess, I simply gave the roach flying lessons, something to which the insect was probably not accustomed.
The sensory overload grew with a visit to the Denver Aquarium, where I knew I’d pay $13 to get my boy in free, but was not prepared for the additional and seemingly criminal $6 fee to park in a nearly empty lot.
As we descended into the fishy catacombs my son’s reaction to the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fish went from fascination to boredom.
The overbearing sounds from the displays put both of us on edge. Also, what passed for native cutthroat trout in this aquarium were a far cry from those that I’ve caught in our high mountain lakes and streams, in much the same way Denver residents seem to be a species apart from people who live in my own community. When we reached the glass tunnel where giant manta rays “flew” overhead and the sound of surf pounded off the acrylic walls, my son had become more interested in the texture of the floor. By the time we reached the tank full of enormous sharks, I was all but alone in a faux sea of foreign sensations.
It was time to go home …
The power had been off for more than two hours, and son and mother had drifted off to sleep. I decided to stay up because I had a hunch it might come back on, and I really wanted a shower before bed. I walked around the house and tried to turn off everything I could remember being on before the power went off. This would minimize the roar when the electricity jolted back on. I stretched out before the fire and pulled a blanket over me. The half moon shone through the window, silhouetting the slight waving of pine branches outside.
The silence was nearly deafening.
Hal Walter is a semi-retired newspaper editor and writer who lives in the Wet Mountains.
