(The Great Hall at Refuge Farm. Respite for a Refugee. Photo Socotra.)

I don’t call it Refuge Farm lightly. The little place nestled between the two creeks has pretty much what you would need to get by in a pinch, and a pinch is what we were in.

I was horizontal, looking up, skin dewy and sticky with the humidity. The fan attempted to do something with the sultry air and not succeeding. The single circuit of power that pulsed with the product of the emergency generator in the basement of Big Pink allowed me to run the fan and the radio in the back bedroom.

Crazy, really, since any reasonable system would have fed the refrigerator first.

Oh well. From what the news radio told me, the food that was nestled in the once frosty box was a write-off already, and the other word from the little radio was that the power companies were trying to manage expectations.

The fridge was going to be a disaster when I opened it again, so screw it.

Oh well. The chipper voices on News radio (“Traffic and Weather on the 8’s!”) told us the food was gone, wasted, since they would not be able to get the juice back on for a week.

Frank is my yard guy. He has spent more time on the farm than I have of late, and he sent me a text. He lost power down at his place in Culpeper and said it was as savage as anything he has seen. He was on generator power, and offered to swing by the farm and check it out for damage.

Crap, I thought. Suppose the place got wiped slick? There was nothing I could do about it. Frank was going to have to go out and look for gas and I asked if he could let me know if I had been overcome with another disaster.

He texted that he would, and I continued to sweat where I was. My pal Point Loma wrote to say that he had seen the Derecha close up and personal. I like his notes. He saves time by not using capital letters and stuff. It is sort of like having ee cummings as a correspondent.

He said: “i was sitting in the gazebo at the marina in galesville doing e-mail and thinking that i ought to check the weather channel for thunderstorms before hitting the rack. then i heard this roaring sound to the west, went out into the dark and saw a black wall of clouds approaching. before i could think “what the fuck is that?” i got hit in the face and eyes with the cloud of dust preceding the storm front and the power went off in an eerie fashion. i grabbed the laptop, snapped it shut, tossed it into the trunk of the car (which as handily right next to the gazebo), and sprinted out the pier to the boat. it took a good minute of armstronging it over to the finger pier so i could get blown aboard and then the rain hit. i managed to get the hatches and ports buttoned up and then grabbed a beer out of the fridge to sit in watch in awe. there was shit flying everywhere – inflatable dinghies cartwheeling down the fairway, torrential sideways blowing rain – only other time i saw something like that was in a hurricane. it blew a good 30-45 minutes and then we survivors crept out of our boats to do some damage assessment. except for dirt and leaves blown in at the onset, i had none but others weren’t so lucky. and now being soaked to the skin, it was cold.”

I wrote back that I had slept through the whole thing, and he had at least a half hour more excitement than we did. Then Frank called from the farm.

He said there was a screen off on the front porch, either from the storm of someone trying to get in. He looked in the window and reported the kitchen dials and such were illuminated and no major damage beyond voyage repairs.

What is the point in having a refuge if you do not avail yourself of it?

I looked up at the ceiling. I could stay here and sweat, or get behind the wheel of the Bluesmobile and head south, a power refugee, and head for Refuge Farm. It is a bit of a production number, what with the crutches and the computers, but damn it, it there was power, there was going to be air conditioning.

I leveraged myself out of bed and collected some connecting cables, the iPad, the laptop and threw them in an old parachute bag with a canvas strap that did not quite trip me as I tottered on the crutches.

I watered the plants. I and headed out the door, locking it behind me.

The air conditioning on the old police car worked like a champ. Once I cleared Fairfax County, people seemed to be acting normally.

Interesting. We have yet to see the massive dislocation of the entire system, the whole grid, all at once. I am curious what our response will be.

I just drove down the road through one darkened sector, and turned the air conditioning down to 68 when I arrived. There was canned food and liquor, and though the quinine water was nearing the end of its shelf life, everything was else was good. A comforting refuge for a refugee.

There was ice spilling out of the chute in the side-by-side reefer.

I made a very tall vodka-and-something and sat down on the couch, watching the ceiling fans swirl the rapidly chilling air through the tall room.

Power is good, I thought. Like way good.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com