A Peaceful Foreboding
It crackles. Have you ever heard the sound of a wintry mix falling in the Appalachians? It sounds a bit like rain with its steady, calming rhythm, and a bit like hail, drumming the ground with more force of feeling. Everything else is still. Silent. Amplifying the crackling sound of falling ice. Can a sound be peaceful and foreboding at the same time?
Nature Hunkers Down
The resident bear is absent from the fringes of the neighborhood, as evidenced by undisturbed trash cans tucked against garages. No playful banter from the family of squirrels in the copse of trees behind my house. I wonder if they’re bunkering down somewhere near Phil’s house, two blocks over. He’s got feeders enough for the whole of squirrel, bird, and deerkind there, bag over bag stacked in his screened porch.
The cat that bothers my flowerbeds can’t be bothered today, and even the ever-present braying of the repressed hounds across the street is hushed. Storms swirl here against the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, straining to break to the sea in the east. They slow, adopting the pace of life of those on the ground.
The Weight of the Ice
The ice falls, and I know we’ll lose power; the lines can’t take the weight. This sort of storm happens maybe once a decade in the Shenandoah Valley. The generational Virginians have built-in resilience and wood-burning stoves. The newbies on the 100% electrical grid gaze at their fake fireplaces and panic. Having lived here for 10 years, we lie somewhere in the mini propane middle.
Breaking the Reverie
A scraping shovel breaks my reverie as my husband starts on the walks. He’ll start on Rossi’s drive after that, then Frank’s. I see smoke rising from a chimney across the way, my phone dings a message from the neighborhood page, and I know we’ll be alright.
