Conciousness was just beginning to overtake me early yesterday morning as I lay there listening to the steady freight train roar of the wind and watching the trees in Baxter Woods out back sway wildly in the gray light.

The storm was blowing through full force.

Then, from the front of the house: Crack! Boom!

The noise woke me completely, and so excited my cat Molly that she made like a flying squirrel and leapt from the hallway over the bed in one bound and was gone into hiding, barely missing my face in flight.

The radio crackled and went dead. And I knew at once that the effects of this storm were going to last a bit longer than most for folks in my neck of the city woods.

Downstairs, looking out the living room window, my fears were confirmed.

Half of the big red maple in front of the house was now out in the street, completely blocking it from curb to curb. And with it came a tangle of telephone and electrical wires from the house. Along with bits of gutter and whatnot.

Uh oh. Red maple down, power out...
All photos by Carey Kish

Hmmm. What to do?

No power. Not today. Not for a long while most likely.

I grabbed my backpack, dug out the cook kit and alcohol stove, set it all on top of the now impotent kitchen stove, and set a pot of water to boiling for morning coffee.

Indoor camping, April-in-Maine-nor'easter storm style!

Cup of strong brew in hand I crawled back upstairs, snapped on my headlamp and relaxed to a morning of book reading and hike planning.

Edward Abbey got some page time. Then the latest National Geographic Adventure and Backpacker mags.

But my new guidebook to the Cohos Trail got most of my time. I read and read and penciled notes in the margins and added up mileage from the charts. I planned food caches and overnight stops and generally daydreamed about the coming joys of a two week, 162-mile thru-hike through the mountain wilds of northern New Hampshire in early August.

My kind of rainy day entertainment.

Somewhere during all this excitement a wonderful nap overtook me. And I woke with a start sometime later with an overwhelming urge to get outside into the maw of the storm.

On went the fleece and raingear, the camera into a plastic bag and it was off to the Fore River Sanctuary for a look around.

Wow!

Jewell Falls was churning in a massive, rushing torrent, just barely making it under the little bridge before crashing down the hillside. A Class 6 death wish kayak run for sure.

What a truly incredible sight.

Jewell Falls flowing full tilt during yesterday's big storm.

I photographed the falls up and down and stood for long minutes in the wind and rain transfixed by the power of the water flowing by at my feet.

Just for reference, this is Jewell Falls early last November.

Back at the car I couldn't help but take a drive around to check out the destruction around town. Huge trees were down everywhere. And at Back Cove four-foot waves were breaking over the bank at the foot of Vannah Avenue.

A belly full of breakfast at Steve and Renee's, some new batteries for the radio and I was back home for the day.

Perhaps I should have skipped the stop for the batteries. And satisfied myself with the quiet. Because as soon as I popped them into my radio I heard the news of the atrocities at Virginia Tech.

My heart sank. And I felt disoriented all over again. Barely a week after the sudden death of a friend in a skiing accident, now more senseless loss of life. My normally thick skin was rubbed raw. What the hell is going on with this world anyway?

It's no damn wonder really, is it, why I and others spend a good deal of time planning escapes from this kind of crap. The news is mostly all bad. We seem to have lost our sensibilities.

And only outdoors it seems, on the trail, on the river, wherever it is that's far away from the radio and TV, can we rest and rejuvenate and find peace and sanity.

With that thought I lit the kerosene lamp, put a can of beans on the campstove and went back to the pages of the Cohos Trail guide and that part of the future which I can affect positively...