Remember when John Carter* went to Mars, and the Tharks decided his name was “Virginia”? They would shout, “VAA-JINN-YAAA!” in their huge Thark voices. Carter would gently roll his eyes and say, “My name is John Carter. I am from Virginia.” “Yes!” The Tharks would shout, waving their four green arms with gleeful abandon. “VAA-JINN-YAAA!”
Most people know by now that Southeast Alaska, where I have lived for many years, is a rainforest, and it isn’t all that cold**. That is because I keep telling them. However, there are some Tharkish souls who think that this scenario is no fun at all, and they carry right on conjuring up notions of midnight sun, twelve feet of snow, and wind chills of fifty below.
Those things do happen in Alaska, but not here. In Craig we get rain, wind, and occasionally snow. But if you want a real “Alaskan” experience, you might try visiting Powhatan, Virginia, in the wintertime. When the power goes out there, it stays out for three days or more. Whenever this happens, my sister Laura takes her perishables out of the refrigerator and freezer and buries them carefully in a snowdrift. She tells me it works like a charm. Once I was visiting Powhatan during one of these epic power outages, and on the fourth night I was awakened by a prodigious rumbling. I looked out of the window of my little cottage and saw a truck nearly as tall as the tobacco barn. Men in helmets did something, and the lights came back on.
When these things happen, sister Mary stays in Highland Springs where the amenities are more modern in nature.
Compare this experience to my cushy life in Craig: when the power goes out, it stays off for an hour at most.
Two memories of Powhatan come to mind. First one: I was about six years old and we had an epic snowstorm in March. I’m sure the power was out, but what six-year-old, circa 1966, would care about that? We built a huge igloo in the side yard and didn’t come out for many days. Second one: around 1977 it was so cold that the entire James River froze across. Every surface of ground in the vicinity was glare ice, and we amused ourselves by bundling up and trying to walk across the yard.
When it comes to weather challenges, VAA-JINN-YAAA just might take the cake. Or maybe the ice cream.
*Movie, John Carter, based on the Mars series by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
**See my earlier blog I live in Alaska but it isn’t cold. – Right as Rain Online
Yes!!! I remember the igloo and the frozen river of 1977 and all the cats trying to run but were slipping instead heehee
Yup, me too! Good times.
Interestingly, in order to keep us excited about facing weeks of ice, and days of no power, Mama would tell us we were “northwoodsing it.”
The snow drifts mentioned come when our many roofs avalanche. I am always concerned when that happens, knowing how it immediately turns to ice, and carefully check on all the cats. (Though with the noise of the avalanche, any cat is long gone before it hits the ground.)
On day 4 of no power, there are now beer bottles in the snow drifts, beside the milk.
Well, the beer needs to be cold, regardless of what else is happening!