Day 3 - 30 -- cleanup and sadness

Waking this morning brought the immediate anxiety of not wanting to look out the windows. Perhaps I could ignore the external environment by just pretending it wasn't there. Maybe it wouldn't be worse than it was after midnight when I headed to bed for the second time last night. Well, much as it would have been nice to just shrink the world down to the interior of the house for just a while longer, I did have to look and face it like an adult. There had been a measurable increase in snow as the storm tapered off overnight. Everything was enrobed in white. Trees were bending to the earth. Trying to see beyond a few feet was challenging today because of the reduced depth perception of the monochromatic world. I ventured out to clear off the steps and see if I could make a walkway out towards the street. I moved the 15 foot-ish branch from across the driveway and shoveled onwards. It took two hours to get to the back of the car. The loader would come later in the day to clear from the street to the back of the car. The top layer was wet, middle layer lighter and drier and the bottom was solid slush. I changed to a cooler coat early into the process and then took a break to go in to put lunch in the microwave so it would be quicker to heat and eat when I stopped the shoveling.

As I got closer to the street, the enormity of the situation became clearer. I could see workmen on my neighbours house across the street -- in bright orange jumpsuits -- as they seemed to be working on the reattachment of wires to the house. That seemed odd, but I just shoveled onwards. As I got up by the car, I saw the huge branch from their maple that obviously had fallen across the wires onto the street. The workers had moved the branches to the side of the road and rehung the wires. The house next to them had the better part of a younger tree lying across the width of the yard. The top of the pine between the two yards was bent toward the ground and someone in the street could see a split in the trunk that I couldn't see from my vantage point. I expect that both trees will be taken down which makes me sad. There were other trees and branches across lines further down the street. The people shoveling across the street said that a couple homes down the road had huge trees in front of the doors so they couldn't even get out that way. Other reports from friends and colleagues note major tree damage. Needless to say, the world will look different well beyond the whiteness of today.

The selection for today is one that brings a sense of calm, yet also speaks to a love that could be similar to that I have for the trees around the neighbourhood. They've been there for a long time, long before I arrived, and they just seem to be part of 'home' here. The song is by a favourite band that really was part of the soundtrack of our lives <smile>. Enjoy!

Seven Bridges Road -- The Eagles