We are just emerging from the most damaging ice storm to hit this area in anyone’s memory. Roughly 1.5 inches of ice accumulated on everything, even blades of grass. For over a week we had no water, and no electricity — a challenge in the dead of winter. Fortunately, the climate in Arkansas is relatively mild, and for the most part we avoided severe cold during this period. Many around here still have no electricity and water, 12 days after the storm.
What have we learned from this? Why is it relevant to this blog?
This was a dress rehearsal for collapse and relocalization. It is interesting that in this area there are two very different contexts to compare. First, there is Harrison, the city dwellers 22 miles away living in conventional neighborhoods with the presumed conveniences of city life. In contrast, there is here, Newton County, a very sparsely populated rural area composed of farms and some retirees — country people. It is instructive to see how differently the small town and rural areas reacted to the crisis.
Harrison, a small town of 12,000 or so, with a somewhat larger metro area, was deeply impacted by the crisis, even though the ice storm was harder on the rural areas. (As I write this there are still many who here who have no water or electricity after two weeks.) People in Harrison have no backup systems. Without water, electricity, and heat (due to lack of electricity), many abandoned their homes and drove 25 miles away to stay in Branson, MO hotels and motels discounted to assist storm vicitims. Without electricity, the customary comforts of life were gone for them. No fast food, no TV, reduced grocery availability, and most businesses closed for many days. Even gasoline was not widely available. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, mile long lines of cars waited to get gas at the few service stations that were open. In many cases, people huddled in the few homes that had heat. The community did organize emergency shelters, and there was the distribution of drinking water. Basically, except for stop-gap measures, the community was on its knees until electricity was restored.
In contrast, rural Newton County residents responded quite differently. As rural people we are accustomed to taking care of our own problems. We don’t have extensive services, never have, and likely never well. As a result, when trees broke down and blocked our roads, residents fired up their chainsaws and cut them out. Not a crisis, just a part of how we manage downed trees around here except this time with more to do. There was not such a big deal and our roads were clear in about two or three hours. Trees continued to break down, and we continued to cut them up, but we stayed ahead of the problem pretty easily. Nice firewood kicker too.
Electricity for us is needed but not essential. If you live in a rural area grid failures are common enough that you have back-up plans. We lived by the sun, lit candles and keronsene lamps, or just enjoyed light from our glass front wood stoves. We cooked both on the wood stove, and on hand-lit propane stoves. This was inconvenient, but not so out of the ordinary that we didn’t know what to do. Water is the remaining issue, but not a problem in a rural setting in Arkansas. We hauled water from our spring and captured roof meltoff for flushing the toilets and watering our animals. In contrast to Harrison, I don’t know anyone in our rural area who abandoned their home, not even the very elderly. We just dug in and did what we know how to do. It would have been no problem to go for weeks without electricity or propane because doing without these conveniences is well understood. We took care of ourselves, and checked in on one another.
It is now becoming more evident that a serious dislocation is in our future due to the accelerating collapse of the economy. Many still hold out hope for a return to the old order if just a few years ago, and are in denial, but the collapse is now in clear view. How will we fare in Newton County? For us it will not be much different. We will slaughter our own animals and eat out of the woods as well. We are all gardeners, usually raising far more than we can consume. We put food by, we trade everything. The way we live is not poverty, but it extends from a durable cultural memory of poverty. Living closer to necessity is a habit borne out of our preferences for simplicity and the satisfaction of a large measure of self-sufficiency. We live close to nature and have a reverence for the wild. We are a community.
Newton County is the Plan B to the world’s Plan A. We could have easily lived on indefinitely without electricity. How long is not clear. I believe none of us feel or felt particularly overwhelmed. It is a little frustrating to have so much downed timber. Yesterday, on my 60th birthday I cut wood and burned tree brush just about all day long. I hate the way the trees look now, but with the spring and leaf-on the scars of the storm will be largely hidden. It is no different than for any of us, there have been disappointments and inconveniences in our lives, but life itself is optimistic, and self-healing, and we move ahead with an expectation of renewal and positive expectancy. We did lose a lot of big limbs, we also gained many years of firewood. No great change manifests just one way.
Next week I begin the long process of sprouting my seedlings for the garden. This year I will probably grow 5 kinds of tomatoes, three kinds of potatoes, summer squash, pole beans, greens, cucumbers, and who knows what. Every year I get seeds that nobody in their right mind would try. It’s all good. I grow a bean called “trail of tears”, a seed that dates far back into pre-history. I meditate on the suffering of the native americans who migrated through here, they grew this bean. They understood true hardship and suffering, yet they planted and went on. Nothing we moderns do or experience is hard by comparison, yet many of us imagine ourselves in deep hardship when the electricity goes out. It is nonsense.
With the collapse, most of us will have to find a way to rethink what constitutes the good life. People in our rural circumstances are where we need to be. There will be farther to go even for us, but we are tough, resilient, and capable. We don’t think about it too much, we just plow ahead, and we work together. We laugh a lot, and just dig in. I think our lives and strategies for living are what America must rediscover. It’s not bad at all, just a little inconvenient at first. Everything will be alright, just different. It’s time to rethink what matters most, and make other plans.
