January 2019 is the 10th anniversary of a significant event that occurred in my corner of the world -- the following piece is a newspaper column I wrote once my electricity had been restored
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The Ice Beast
Life is like an unorthodox teacher -- you get
the test first and the lesson comes later.
During the evening of January 26, 2009, my
region of the country was having a severe ice storm. Ice was forming on trees,
causing them to literally explode as large branches were falling, trees were
splitting down the middle and some were toppling from the root.
Power lines in Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee
and Kentucky were ravaged. My utility company reported 32,000 out of 37,000
households were without electricity. The four utility poles in the line across
the road from my property had been destroyed. In northern Arkansas, over 6,000
utility poles had to be replaced.
My driveway was blocked by three large fallen
trees and a large branch had collapsed on my van rendering it stationary. I was
without electricity (my only source of heat) and running water, and my phone
lines were dead.
The temperatures dipped into the low 20s and
teens over the next several days. The temperature inside my place dropped into
the 30s at night.
I had plenty of stored food, water and
whiskey on hand, but no alternative heating source.
I spent the first three days trying to stay
warm under some quilts by candle light in my smallest room. My dog threw off
some body heat as well. It was an eerily quiet time for staring out windows all
day and staring at walls at night, and contemplating my existence.
Then on day four, I started thinking about my
grandfather and Hugh Glass.
My grandfather was a very rugged, independent
guy who had a plaque on his wall that read, "I felt sorry for myself when
I had no shoes until the day I saw a man with no feet."
It was obvious the electricity would not be
restored soon, so I decided to stop waiting for help and do something about it.
Since my chainsaw was electric, I started sawing by hand on the fallen trees in
my driveway. The wood was green and wet, making hand-sawing nearly impossible
because it kept pinching the blade.
It took two full days to clear a path, thanks
to a guy who lives down the road and drove by and helped me with the big pieces
with his chainsaw.
Then I had to clear the hanging branch from
my van and move it out of there. Unfortunately, the only place I could move it
was where it got stuck in some deep mud with no room for maneuvering. I
couldn't get it out for many more days until the mud dried.
After 17 days of struggling and hunkering
down, my electricity was restored on February 11.
It took another three days to repair my
running water system because of frozen pipes that had cracked.
Hugh Glass was my inspiration through much of
the ordeal. He was a mountain man, fur trader and honorary Pawnee in the early
1800s.
In 1823, Glass was with an expedition party
of 13 mountain men in the Dakotas whereupon he was off by himself scouting for
game and was attacked by a Grizzly bear. He fought it with his knife and the
bear was eventually killed with the help of his partners, Jim Bridger and John
Fitzgerald.
Glass was badly injured. He had a broken leg,
gashes on his back exposing his ribs and remained unconscious.
The expedition party determined Glass would
soon die.
Bridger and Fitzgerald volunteered to remain
behind and bury Glass when he expired, as the expedition party moved on toward
the valley of the Yellowstone.
While Fitzgerald and Bridger were digging the
grave, a band of hostile Arikara Indians appeared. Fitzgerald and Bridger
quickly grabbed Glass's rifle, knife and equipment, and high-tailed it out of
there.
When they caught up with the expedition
party, they reported that Glass had died.
At some point, Glass regained consciousness. No
weapons, no equipment, abandoned by his partners.
First, he set his broken leg.
All of his deep gashes were festering,
potentially turning to gangrene, so he laid his wounded back on a rotting log
allowing maggots to eat the dead flesh.
The nearest settlement was Fort Kiowa on the
Missouri River, some 200 miles away. Glass wrapped himself in a bear hide that
was intended to be his burial shroud and began crawling toward the south.
Glass survived on wild berries and roots. On
one occasion he drove two wolves away from a dead animal carcass and consumed
some meat.
It took him six weeks to reach the Cheyenne
River, where he fashioned a raft and floated down the river, eventually reaching
Fort Kiowa.
After a long recuperation, Glass set out to
have an unfriendly chat with Bridger and Fitzgerald.
He eventually encountered Bridger near the
mouth of the Bighorn River on the Yellowstone.
But Bridger was only 17 years old at the time
of the incident, thus Glass forgave him.
Later, he found Fitzgerald. But Fitzgerald
had joined the U.S. Army, so Glass refrained from killing him. Killing a
soldier would lead to a death sentence. However, he did retrieve his missing
rifle from Fitzgerald.
In the winter of 1833, Hugh Glass and two
other mountain men were killed by Arikara Indians on the Yellowstone River.
A few months later, some fur trappers
recognized Hugh Glass's rifle in the hands of an Arikara Indian who was trying
to pass himself off as a friendly Minitaris Indian, whereupon he was swiftly
dispatched to the Happy Hunting Ground in the Sky.
So I figured if Hugh Glass could travel 200
miles by crawling overland wrapped in a bear skin for 6 weeks with a broken
leg, then build a raft and float down a river, surely I could survive without
electricity and running water for 17 days.
The glory of existence is not what happens to
you -- it's what you do when it happens.
___________
Quote
for the Day – "When you're going through hell, keep going." Winston
Churchill
___________
Bret Burquest is the author of 12 books. He lives in the Ozark
Mountains with a couple of dogs and where electricity is a very handy item.
___________
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