The wind died down. It seems unusually quiet outside. Takes some getting used to, the absence of the drawn-out dull roar. The animals, I suspect like me that they are both pleased and mystified.

What’s next? No one is even asking this question. If it snows heavily, and it might, we will have a differing set of tasks ahead of us. Wind does not have to be moved. This is because it is moving things for us. But snow, in the driveway, on the roads, on the roofs, it has to be dealt with.

What I fear is that it might rain. If it does, then we are going to be seriously screwed. Rain forms ice, hard to walk on.

Today I was in town, and I had to walk several blocks, from where the books were in the town bookcases, to the U-Haul storage area. I had my backpack on, so my balance was impaired just a bit. I am now practiced at walking on ice – I gravitate in the direction of the snow patches and the gravel.

I crossed several busy streets – cars that were at the distance approached and had to slow down. Palmer, Alaska is not like Portland Oregon, or what Portland, Oregon used to be. There, the cars actually stop and let pedestrians cross. Here, they actually speed up so that pedestrians have no choice but wait until they’ve passed. I don’t think this is Palmer drivers. I think this is Wasilla drivers who are passing through Palmer.

But the U-Haul parking lot – there it was, ahead of me, a long stretch of sheet ice. I had one option, which was to climb up over a snow berm, and inch myself up in the direction of the main building by holding onto the row of U-Hauls. The problem was that the berm was a few feet high, and I wasn’t sure if it would hold my weight.

So I headed across the ice. And this time I tried something new, which was to walk lightly instead of heavily. This worked pretty well, I mean I didn’t fall down. I have yet to fall. I’m not worried about breaking anything – I went into this winter with an extra layer of fat – and I still have it. This layer will cushion any fall, accidental or otherwise.

It was a long, slow walk; in fact, one in which I had plenty of time to think about a variety of things, including the Bright Lights Book Project.

Now that there’s no heat in the Meeting House, I’m at loose ends. It had become a literary base camp for me. Today, a woman who works for the Head Start program came and took six boxes of kids’ books. She would have lingered had there been heat in that building. Instead, she found herself looking through books in a very cold interior.

I told her that I could not imagine that the Meeting House would get this cold.

So here we are, bracing ourselves for another weather-related onslaught.

As best I can, I will try and keep my spirits up.

Next: 11. 1/11/22: Mother Nature: When Enough is Enough