The ice storm seems so gentle and quiet. The tiny raindrops fall so softly in the freezing fog, such tender little drizzle. But the branches I see on the tree outside my window begin to shine with a coating of ice. It is a quarter inch thick at first, soon a half an inch.
It is so peaceful and lovely. The silent beauty of it all sends me into a reverie. I watch the trees. They glisten and sparkle. But eventually the ice begins to weigh them down. Their gentle movements and subtle quiverings cease. Long branches grow heavy and hang down close to their trunks.
More ice is forming now. The forest trees fidget and shift. Something is wrong! Now they are so weighed down that they remind me of a huge crowd of winter refugees who are each wearing three overcoats and trudging along carrying more bags than they can hold, trying not to collapse. The trees sway now, each one moving not to a shared breeze, but staggering dizzily in place to keep its own balance. I wonder if they will fall down from the weight.
As I watch, fascinated, the silent forest suddenly transforms before my eyes. The trees are at full capacity. They cannot bear any more ice. A sharp crack splits the silent fog. And so it begins. The whole forest erupts with pops and crashes all at once. The forest is groaning under the load of ice.
All of this happens more quickly than I realize. At first I wonder who is shooting off guns in this weather. At this point it dawns on me that we will probably lose electricity soon.
We live in the forest. All roads to our house are lined with a forest of second growth Doug Fir logged seventy years ago. The biggest trees are seven or eight stories tall at this age, and perhaps three feet across at the base of the trunk. Small for Doug Fir, but pretty big when it comes to falling on power lines, cars, and houses.
Before I can even fill the bathtub with water for flushing, bink! The power winks off. It does not return for four days and nights of f-f-f-freezing cold weather. We huddle by the fireplace.
The forest continues to pop and crack, constantly, every few seconds, punctuated by an occasional thunderous crash. The cacophony is to go on unabated for the next five days.
Each kind of tree deals with the ice in its own way. Some trees hardly accumulate much ice at all, due to their leaf/branch/or needle structure. With hundreds of trees down all around, our four story tall Sequoia didn't hold much ice, and did not loose a branch!
(Before:)
(After:)
Many trees I had planted for ornamental reasons fell, giving me a new appreciation of the wisely adapted native tree.
Overall, the native Doug Firs do fine, much to my surprise. Their ice strategy reveals itself to be the dropping of lots of branches for the big trees, and for the little ones, the top snapping off. Kinda reminds me of some kinds of crustaceans which can lose appendages, survive, and grow new ones later.
I learn to decode the Doug Fir ice status by observing their treetops. Most of the icy treetops are bent over and pointing toward the ground at the five, six, or seven o'clock positions.
They stay like that for days until warmer rain comes and thawing begins. I monitor the situation from inside the house as the tree top indicator needle points crawl to eight, nine, and then ten o'clock. Now most of them once again point skyward.
On day five, I venture out into the road to check it all out. But softball sized and even baseball bat sized chunks of ice, loosened by rain, are still sliding off the tall trees and crashing to the ground. Ice is rocks, I remind myself, and this is a hard hat zone, so I scurry back inside. Oddly, the roads remain pretty much dry and ice free for the duration.
(See how this willow popped right back up when the ice melted!):
For months I have worried about the damage the long west coast drought was causing. You have to be aware of fire hazards when you have lots of dried out, stressed, and dead trees around. The forest here has looked unwell for the last year to me. With global warming, climate change in this place feels inexorable.
The forest will change out the Doug Firs and replace them with the more dry tolerant pines. It is only a matter of when and how. We forest dwellers hope it will not be by fire; at least not in this part of the forest.
I had been keeping an eye on two disturbing newly occuring dead zones in my area coinciding with these dry years, one down the street, and one, just below us, down the hill. They look like brown spots on the sattelite views I find online. The dead zone down the street gets noticed, and last month the neighbor cuts down almost all of the trees there.
But the not the dead zone just below us. So it is revelation to me now, as I listen the the sound of the forest cleaning itself up! More pops and crashes are coming from the brown area than elsewhere around the neighborhood. Now, after the ice is gone, I see a lot more of the sky in that direction. I see how ice is a tool my forest uses, just like fire.
So yeah, there is now a huge mess to clear from streets and so on, but to me it is still a relief. I still live in a self healing, alive and hanging in there ecosystem.
“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”
-Lao Tzu
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