For this New Year, I wish you good health and happiness in all ways … and just the right balance between the easy groove of old habits and the invigorating excitement of new experiments!
There is nothing like a four-day power outage to catapult us right out of our habitual way of life into a scramble of creative responses and improvised solutions! Of course not everybody in the Laurentians was equally affected by this pre-Christmas gift of tons of snow and trees on power lines. I met a colleague in the supermarket who has municipal water and a gas stove, and who told me that it wasn’t a big deal for her family. The situation was definitely more precarious for me: I was functioning without running water, cooking on a basic little wood stove in the basement, and relying on candle light and a pocket lamp once it got dark.
It was certainly a very interesting experience, the longest I have had to face since I moved to the Laurentians seven and a half years ago. I enjoyed the sense of adventure, and I had some brilliant and some not so bright ideas about how to deal with the various challenges along the way. I also realized just how much time and energy are spent on the essentials of life when we have to make do without the creature comforts that we usually take for granted.
It was certainly a very interesting experience, the longest I have had to face since I moved to the Laurentians seven and a half years ago. I enjoyed the sense of adventure, and I had some brilliant and some not so bright ideas about how to deal with the various challenges along the way. I also realized just how much time and energy are spent on the essentials of life when we have to make do without the creature comforts that we usually take for granted.