How Would It Be to Have No Wild Places Left to Go?

I pour water into the coffee filter, fix up a cup, and sit with the meditation I say every morning: For the furthering of all sentient beings; and the protection of earth, air and water. For those moments, fear recedes. There is plenty of wood within easy reach for the woodstove. I have enough food. The phones work. I have the internet for travel — not the same, no, far from the same as stepping onto Fat Man’s Trail or sitting in the heart of the seven Ponderosas off Old Munds Highway or heading out into the Joshua desert with no map — but I can send out writing, be in touch with colleagues and friends, and travel a Montana mountain road in my favorite Van Morrison YouTube.

I start sausage frying on the kitchen stove and go back to the computer. I’m working on a collaborative piece with the eagleman in Alaska when the computer screen flickers, fades, and jumps back up. Every LED light on and around my desk is out. I flick the light switch. Nothing. I call my neighbor. “Yep, power’s out. A tree down a few blocks away. They said it should be back up by 4.”

I finish the next part of the collaborative piece and push Send. Nothing happens. Internet access is gone, the modem lights gone dead. I try to bootleg a neighbor’s wifi. Defunct. I shut down the computer.

There is no sizzle of chicken sausages frying in the kitchen. The stove is out. I set another log in the woodstove and set the old iron skillet on the stove. In minutes, breakfast is ready. I boil water for a second cup of coffee, consider what comes next, and realize the milk is used up. Yuppie Crisis, as my best friend and I used to say. I pull on boots and hike over to a local coffeeshop.

Their power is down, but they are serving cold food and something that looks a little like coffee. The barista grins and says, “Want coffee and a cookie? On us. The coffee’s a little weak. We’ve been smashing the beans with a hammer.” I pass on the offer and pay for the milk. “No way,” the barista says, “it’s Happy Grid Down Day.”

The power doesn’t come back till after I’ve gone to sleep. By then, I’ve read by window- and candlelight, The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan, a weave of brutally heartbreaking stories of those who caused and lived through the mid-’30s American Dust Bowl disaster. The book is a reminder that we cannot disregard the natural rhythms and structures of the earth. And it holds stories of what it is to be truly cut off — sodbusters trapped in shanties, blocked from loved ones and hospitals by five-foot-high dirt dunes drifted across roads.

Today, I’ve talked with friends and sat in the silent dark with the luxury of no one else to take care of — and nowhere I have to be. I’ve let my memories take me to the Joshua Buddha in the Mojave north of Yucca Valley and standing with the eagleman on a San Juan ferry watching sunset go crazy on the water. I’ve wondered how it is for people without connection to the earth. How can they be alone in the dark? How can they live with being so cut off?

How would it be to have no wild places left to go? For shelter. For medicine. For remembering who we are.