Where's Walden???

Where’s Walden???

No, that’s not a typo. As I sit here in my log cabin in front of a flickering fire, listening to the wind play a wistful tune on the chimes hanging just outside our back door, I bless and curse this power outage simultaneously, reflecting on how different life is now than when Walden was penned, and struggling with guilt over my addiction to the luxuries in life that I take so much for granted.

It is nice, I think, to stop and just sit sometimes.  Do nothing. Not even speak. Just sit and watch the flames before me flicker and dance. It is true that my sabbatical from the 21^st century has been forced upon me by Mother Nature, but If I really wanted to, I could go out to the garage and charge my dead cell phone with my car charger.  I still have some juice left on my iPad that I spent good money on to have cellular service for just such an occasion. I could message, Facebook, email and surf the web to my heart’s content, but here I sit, thinking about how we as a culture have allowed ourselves to be enslaved to the technology that surrounds us, taking us farther and farther away from the simplicity of life that could be ours. Who has time to just "be"? To just sit? Watch a fire, or sit on a swing in the middle of the day and listen to the clear notes of a wood thrush or the tin horn tunes of a nuthatch? 

One of my favorite poems is called Leisure Time. It is to a certain degree, a sad reminder of how I am frittering away precious moments that I can never recover, spending my life in the pursuit of obtaining things. Henry David Thoreau said that the cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it.

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this is if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare. 

William Henry Davies

It is so easy in our day and time to be consumed with the luxuries and conveniences of our culture. On the other hand, by the minute I am getting hungrier, grubbier, and colder the longer our power is out. Funny what a little deprivation can do to a gal.  "Are we really enslaved? Or have we been set free from the harsh life that our ancestors endured?  Hmmmm...Something to Think about, for sure. Pioneer life without any conveniences sounds romantic at first, but try to live that way for a week even, and most people, including myself would bolt like a (fill in your favorite saying here  – branded cow, spooked horse, groom on his wedding day, etc.)

Last night we lost power  - an ice storm, a blown transformer somewhere close – and were instantly plunged into the dark ages – that terrible time many years ago when there were no glowing cell phones, iPads, computers, or TV’s with which to warm the cockles of our hearts, no sleek electric stoves that, with a touch of a button, would summon glowing rings of fire without flame with which one could whip up a tasty dish from the latest Food Network recipe email. Back then there were no monolithic French-door refrigerators – big, amazing boxes with 4 convenient doors one could open and retrieve cold milk, vegetables, chilled drinks and even frozen meat from without having to trudge down to the root cellar or smokehouse, or for that matter, the barn, where Betsy the cow waited impatiently for her morning milking.

Nope, nothing like a power outage to inspire gratitude for the smallest of conveniences in our extraordinarily privileged, totally cushy, 21^st century life.  I have come to understand this fully every time in the last 12 hours when I have walked into a dark room and went to flip a switch and nothing happened – every time I wanted to cook a meal, wash my hands, flush a toilet, or even try to hang out anywhere but in front of the fireplace – no central heat! 

The thought that keeps me happy, feeling like this is some camping adventure of sorts, is that it is only temporary. Soon (hopefully), as if by a miracle, all the lights in the house will blink on, and Duke Energy will breathe life back into all our cute little artificially intelligent devices – sassy phones that talk back to you when you ask for directions, computers that know you so well they anticipate what ads, stories, or searches you want to read, and television shows that tell you what you should be wearing, eating, thinking, doing or stop doing. 

Ah, yes! Life as we know it, life as we want it. Life as we live it....and yet, I dream of a Walden life....longing ...for that simpler time...WAIT!!! The lights just flickered!!! POWER'S BACK ON!!!!