Where's the Water?

Early mornings are never my best, most alert moments, so when I flushed the toilet early last Friday I barely noticed that the water gurgled, rather than flushed. On to the kitchen and I poured my glass of water and filled the cat's water dish from the water purifier spout. I began making our breakfast and then turned on the regular water faucet. No water! One sigh and gasp from that taken-for-granted spigot, and then, nothing.

A water main must be broken but I carried on fixing morning nourishment since we had a five hour trip to Colorado and another five hours return facing us that day. My always resourceful husband hurried down to the river with two large buckets. He met another person who was like-minded and told Bob that the spring in town had a long line and so he came to the river for his water.

We returned home that night to running water. Was it only five years earlier when we were not dependent on the city or power companies for water or any utilities other than telephone? We have traded independence for convenience in our present life in the city. I remembered when a powerful spring snow storm took out the power lines in the country. We did not notice anything amiss. Our water came from our cistern rain water, our lights from our solar panels and our refrigeration and heat from the propane tank. Our radio announced that the power was out all over the county. It remained out for about two weeks. Generators were chugging along in homes during that time. We never did use our back-up generator. We had sufficient power from the energy of the sun behind the grey clouds and warmth from our cheerful wood stove in the basement.

It was a liberating feeling, living off of the grid. I wrote about it in my first book, "A (not so) Simple Life". The Alabaugh Fire took away that life for now. It is easier living in town with everything handy, but on days like Friday, when the water was silent, I remembered fondly our days when we returned to our rustic roots and were liberated, for a brief moment in our lives, from dependence on those major monopolies.