1/26/98... Coated again.

When the world disconnected again on Saturday you could hear groaning all over town. "You deserve a break today" is not a winning slogan in Maine this month.

Not that it came as a surprise. We are getting all too familiar with El Nino on high.. a massive hot air mass rising up over our frozen landscape and raining down ice. We're beginning to wonder if this is what winters are going to be like, as the planet warms. I suggest you invest in portable generator manufacturing.

Some folks had barely recovered from the first outage when it iced again. My father was out for 12 days, and they'd just rolled the rugs back out, and put away the Coleman stove. When I called to say we were blacked out, they gleefully reported they still had power. Haves and havenots by technological fiat.

There is a certain irony in the distribution of outages. Affluence in the provinces is generally synonymous with physical isolation. That gorgeous view from a lofty remove, that chalet in the deep woods. If you move to Maine with money, you want to be king of your own domain. You will also be the last ones reconnected to the grid. There's no long term justice, however. Now the nobs are buying generators.

The whole experience was leveling. Those of us who have eked our way up the ladder, or who are still living hand-to-mouth, already had woodheat and Coleman lighting, at least in reserve. The middleclass dream of clean and tidy comfort woke up with a bump when the power quit. It made the old subsistence strategies seem less anachronistic. The rich folks had to turn to their low rent neighbors for basics, like firewood and water. Deal with the grittiness.

There was plenty of water aloft this weekend. First it snowed. Then it sleeted. Then frozen rain. Then it was supposed to blow on out of here as rain. Only it kept raining.. and freezing as it lit. The first storm had put an ice load of half an inch or more on everything. This time the ice built up to 3/8ths of an inch here. You'd have thought that every vulnerable limb had come down the first time, but the shedding had only exposed a new layer of branches. The cracking and crashing recommenced.

The damage looks horrific as you drive the roads. Trees topped and toppled. All the patterns inverted, branches pointing down, acute angles with widowmakers barely hanging. But out in the woods the carnage is hardly visible. A few fallen limbs, the odd tree downed, otherwise business as usual. All the damage is along the edges, where the forest meets the manscape.

The trees evolved by growing up together, competing for the light. Where we've made clearings, the trees explode in growth, branching and leafing profusely. Each tree makes a compromise between structural strength and soaring growth. The pioneers in a succession thrive in open sunlight, may even require it for their seeds to sprout. Pines, birches, cherries, poplars, are all rank growing things which sacrifice longterm stability for soaring aspirations. The exuberant aspirants have huge canopies proportionate to their supports. And the ice lays them low.

Many of the trees which proved vulnerable in the open would have done just fine had they grown up in the continuous woodlands they evolved in. The understory, the thickets, provide mutual support as the ice thickens. Trees which can grow up in the shade are more conservative in their structure, so they can benefit from the catastrophes on high. Fir and hemlock and spruce lay down their limbs as the ice loads, like umbrellas folding up, and the water sheds more easily. An ice storm is an education in the habits of trees.

You understand why the ashes choose to put out straight lengths of solid branching each year, and to cast their large sprays of compound leaves in the fall. Their conservatism, carried into their late budding out, has served them well in the woods, although their relative eagerness in the open has proved a weakness.

Yesterday the dogs and I went tromping into the coated wonderland. Unlike the first storm, which was followed by two days of melt, this one presented a classic winter backside, and the ice show lingered for our amusement. Peggy gave me snowshoes for Christmas, and these are the conditions they were invented for. There's an inch or more of glazed crust on top of six inches of powder. The dogs tiptoe and flounder, slide and scrabble. Bigfoot just keeps tromping. The crust breaks, but the shoes keep me on top.

Thirty foot beeches and maples are arched down within 8 feet of the ground. The saplings are laid right down. The resilient cedars are bent almost in circles. The stubborn beeches still have their lower leaves, now all frozen funnels with spouting icicles pouring out of them. The compound fronds of the cedars look like abject hands offering ice to the sky. And the glitter is dazzling.

I stand in the thick growth looking out onto the shining river and the sunlight on an alder clump is twinkling in all the colors of the spectrum. There's a smelt camp out on the edge of the channel, and through the doorway I can see someone watching the Super Bowl. How romantic can it get?

Chico shoved the heavy wet snow out of our dooryard when it turned to rain, and kept sanding as it froze. While we had power I finished the dolphin snowplow I'd dreamed up to give him after he showed me his dolphin collection. An articulated bottlenose, with big fat snowtreds mounted eccentrically at the hump-hinge, and a plowblade in front of his pectoral fins like a breaking wave. All about 10 inches long. Nice curly maple dolphin, walnut tires, ash plow.

After the power quit, I slopped down to Jeanine's through the rain, with the dolphin in my pocket. Not a car on the road. Road crews loading sand at the pile. Chico and Pat were in the darkened lunchroom with some of the other plowmen, talking shop. I waited until they'd pushed back their plates, and Chico was grousing about having to fix his truck.

"Here," I said. Here's a new rig for you." And I rolled it across the table at him. His look was worth a million dollars.

"Did you make that?" He asked openmouthed.

"Naw. I found it in the driveway."

"F-you," he mouthed, and we all laughed.

I'd forgotten how much fun it can be to be a toymaker. And how important it is to move the gift along. There's been a lot of neighborly giving this season in Maine. Reknitting the community.

We were back up and humming by Sunday morning.