"Earth's crammed with heaven." Elizabeth Barrett Browning
(Part 2, continued from the last blog:)
The ice crystal chandeleer palace outside illumines the cold and power outage darkened house. Inside it is quiet, with no refrigerator hum, no sixty cycle electric power hum, no devices or appliances running. The fire crackling in the fireplace is the only sound.
Outside, the only man made sound is the once in a while faraway drone of the chainsaws clearing away fallen trees and branches from the still un passable road.
But the cracks of branches like gunfire in the heavily laden forest punctuate the peace of the ice palace every few seconds, along with the occasional thunderous and sometimes earthshaking crash of huge falling trees. After a while we begin to hear the abrasive crunching drag of the large slides of ice whooshing down from the tall trees and smashing like broken glass on the ground. The sounds thus created by these natural forces are somehow more gentle than actual gunfire and or broken glass though, more fractal.
The fragrance in the forest is now that of fresh cut wood and holiday spice pine scent.
A load of ice falls, and bit by bit, the forest is cleared of some of its' load of dead wood from the drought of the past two years. This is a load off my mind as well, when considering the fire worries the drought caused.
The tinkling, sparkling beauty of this crystal palace is beyond most art I've seen from humans. But it is an ineffable quality in the air during these several freezing days with no electricity that impresses me the most. There is a charge in the atmosphere. It seems to be generated by all of the falling ice as it rubs against the tree needles and leaves and crashes on the ground. Negative ions?A purity and refreshing clarity pervades the quiet, even in the house.
Or maybe it has to do with change in electromagnetic fields due to the utter shutdown of the local grid. Even the local radio stations are on low emergency power generators. Whatever it is, I wonder how we can recreate such a refreshing and charged feeling once things go back to normal.
"May I say, peace becomes you." - Holly Near
