Tell Him Not to Feed the Bears
But there he was, busy pulling, twisting, adjusting, exchanging one tool for another from his leather belt in an easy motion.
We saw on the weather report earlier this week that parts of southern New England might touch eighty degrees. Good for them. In contrast, it was raining ice here, and I do not mean sleet. I mean that while our southern neighbors were digging out summer shorts and tee shirts, we were having an ice storm. We lost power the first day, mid-morning. Got it back late that afternoon. Lost it again early the next day, and I knew it might take a while for it to be restored because, by then, there were many more little blue dots on the outage map that our utility company, Eversource, posts online.
The first thing I do when we lose power is walk down the driveway to see if the culprit is a tree across lines on our property. If not, I continue down the neighbor’s driveway opposite ours, which is rarely used during the winter. Eversource will do the same when they get here, drive around, aiming powerful searchlights into the woods if it is dark and the middle of the night. I figure the least I can do after bringing them out on a weekend (seems it is always a weekend or at night when we lose power) is give them a head start.
The suspect the first day was a tree that had fallen on wires about fifty yards off to the left of the neighbor’s driveway, heading uphill to service lake houses a quarter mile away, as the crow flies. I hiked in to get a closer look and take a picture, which I did from a distance, but water prevented me from reaching the exact spot. I would have had to retreat and approach from a different angle if I wanted to get underneath it, which I did not. It would be up to our Eversource rescuers.
An hour or so later, the rescue truck arrived. In the time it took me to pull on my boots and a coat, the service representative had hoofed it to the edge of our field to look up and down the lines. I wandered over with my picture of the offending tree.
“Yeah, I tried to get down that driveway with the truck and sank in the mud,” the Eversource fellow said, examining the picture. “I’ll have to walk in.”
If his partner in life is anything like my partner in life, he hears “Be careful” each morning going out the door. Well, there was an ice storm going on, and I was fearful just walking around the yard with two dogs on leashes. We were babysitting a couple of golden retrievers that I knew would dash for water if they saw it. We are surrounded by water this time of year, so it was nip and tuck staying on my feet as they tugged me across the icy terrain toward the creeks. As I headed out the door, my wife said, “Don’t break your leg.”
I worried about our Eversource friend getting to that place in the woods with the necessary equipment, including a chainsaw. Three or four hours after sharing the picture with him, power had not come on. I felt it meant the trouble was more extensive or the decision had been made to wait for better conditions. Hopefully, not an accident. On the way to run other errands and to ease my concern, I ventured down the neighbor’s driveway, this time by car, to see if the subject tree was as before.
There was no evidence of any utility trucks, no distant sound of squawk boxes, or idling engines when I reached the spot from earlier in the day. Leaving the car behind, it was quiet as I crunched along, pushing aside branches burdened by ice that went snap, snap, as the frozen coating broke apart. The air was warmer. There was a layer of fog hovering over the ground—not mist, but denser fog. It is neither like winter nor spring under those circumstances. The air smells musty. There is no hint of floral or green. I wore a fleece jacket and a baseball cap. My hands were bare, without the need of gloves, even handling the frozen brush. But because of the ice, everything was fragile. When I stepped on a branch, it did not bend; it broke. Crunch. And around me, I heard ice and small limbs crash to the ground.
Getting to where I could look up the line headed toward the lake, you might imagine my surprise seeing a lone repair person strapped in around the top of a pole in the distance methodically restringing wire, his boots hidden below the layer of fog. By pure chance, I had arrived to find him there, hours after my first report. I would have been as surprised (and delighted) to spot a moose given the location and lack of disturbance—no trucks, no red cones, no radios, no partner standing around. I am not sure that it was even the same person with whom I had shared the picture. Who knows? But there he was, busy pulling, twisting, adjusting, exchanging one tool for another from his leather belt in an easy motion. I thought it looked like he was enjoying himself, as if this was why he got into the business of being a line repairperson in the first place—to be up a pole, eye level with forest wildlife, nobody else around, working above the clouds, with time to think about anniversaries in his life, and daydream about cabins on a lake.
It took a while, but he spotted me and waved. I cupped my hands around my mouth to shout.
“You okay over there?” I yelled.
He nodded vigorously a couple of times. Then, “What about you? You okay?” he shouted, which I took to mean, nothing to see here, pal. All good. Doing my thing.
“Thank you,” I called.
Twist, twist, pull. He slid something back into his belt and, with the free hand, gave me the thumbs up.
Maybe I have shared this: by the end of every winter, I am always expecting a nice Eversource representative to show up and apologize that they will no longer be able to support us and others around here, living as we do in places where trucks cannot reach the power lines. We had an incident in November that brought the utility trucks out—on a weekend, at night—and I hustled out to show support.
“I can show you where those lines go,” I said to the young man in a white hard hat, his beam scoping the field.
“I know where they go,” he said. “I’ve been here before. We all have.”
I doubt that is true for every place they might go, given the rarer incidences of power outages in the bigger communities around here, some with lines underground. We rarely lost power at the Inn over the years. Now that I think about it, I cannot remember an Eversource repair person coming to the place except to install equipment.
But they have all been to the pond. And maybe it is among the things adding adventure, even satisfaction, to the job.
I wonder how it works back at dispatch.
Squawk. Who’s near Old Town Road? . . . Hello? . . .What’s up? . . . Anyone?
Yeah, we can be there.
Who’s with you?
The new kid.
Oh, perfect. Tell him not to feed the bears.