When the Power is Out

Originally posted to Substack “Follow your heart but bring along your brain.”  Senator Kennedy It’s 5 am this ordinary Thursday morning here in the backwoods of Michigans Upper Peninsula. No daylight yet penetrates the kitchen window as I make my way over to the coffee maker and hit the button. A piercing green eye awakens the room with just enough light I’m able to find my way around. I stop for a moment and gaze out the window over the sink. The northern sky is bright with a glowing radiance from the sun slapping his powerful waves towards earth. A flash of brilliance momentarily lights the whole sky with spotlight of color so powerful it fills my kitchen with it’s glow, then just as quickly fades away. What a show!     I notice an ambient orange glow from the living room from the remnants of last night warming fire. I make my way to the woodstove and poke it disturbing the glowing coals. Time for another log. Almost immediately it bursts into flames creating a com...

The temperatures this February evening dropped rapidly as the wind kicks up the powdery white stuff and lands it in places where it is least welcomed. The woodstove chimney shivers with protests as old man winter admires his own strength. It seems as if it were forever since the warmth of the sun comforted my old bones. I think I'd even welcome a huge wood spider stomping across the ceiling right now as opposed to this draft streaming through the cracks of our tired old cabin. Husband and I had a serious discussion last week about whether to continue the homestead or move to warmer digs. We even went as far as to contact rental agents, we felt this was the right move, at least at that moment.  When it came right down to it, what we discovered, we didn't have the heart to leave, to just abandon, our homestead children. So until or when our bodies finally have had enough, we will continue to dedicate ourselves and to nurture that which we have etched out of this foreste...