February 2010

The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.
-- Virginia Woolf

The snowstorms this winter have kept an almost-constant mantle of white over the muddy and leaf-strewn ground, hiding the season’s naked disarray with a beautiful, albeit tiresome, blanket. On those mornings when a fresh layer of snow coincides with a bright blue sky and shining sun, the absolute pristine loveliness stops us in our tracks. The snow-covered spruces and pines look almost lush—their waxy blues and deep, deep greens all the more vibrant for being weighted down with brilliant white. The leaf-bare shrubs are hidden under undulating drifts, giving everything a plumpness and fullness, like some frigid-but-bountiful jungle.

But when we look closer, we see the snapped-off branches and split trunks that the heavy snows have caused. And while the icicles dangling from everyone’s rooflines are story-book quaint, the damage they cause to property and person are anything but. After the big snowfall a few weeks back, we and our neighbors lost power for six days. Our little street was cut off from the rest of the world—quite literally—by downed trees and power lines, so no plows or landscaping crews could dig us out.

D, the dog, and I toughed it out for two nights. The second evening, when the chilly house got dark at sunset, we sat in the den under heavy blankets, staring out the windows at the beautiful but damaged garden. The full moon reflecting off the snowy lawn lit up the house and sent huge shadows around the bedroom, like a klieg light at some movie premier. It was so bright I felt I’d be able to read by nothing but moonlight if I tried. Instead, I went from window to window, gazing out at our familiar garden, now suddenly exotic and broken, bathed in blue light and backlit by a moon the size of the sun.

On the morning of the third day without power and heat, it didn’t take long for us to decide that we’d hike out to the main road with the dog and some hastily-packed belongings, where D’s sister could pick us up and take us to her place. Once ensconced in her warm house with a television playing in the background and coffee brewing in the kitchen, we realized how undone we’d become when we were deprived of heat and power and mobility for three short days. The items we chose to bring, and those we left behind, were a testament to how disheveled our thinking was. That night, lying comfortable and safe, I imagined how poorly we would have fared had we been shivering in a crude lean-to, or some other hastily-built shelter high in the Sierra Nevada mountains, the way the 87 pioneers who became known as the Donner Party must have done during the unending nightmare winter of 1846-1847.

Patrick Breen, an Irish immigrant who, with his wife Margaret; sons John, Edward, Patrick, Simon, James, and Peter; and infant daughter Martha, survived the horrors of that winter, documented their plight in short diary entries between November and March. His words, like those of Virginia Woolf, speak to the duality of the natural world—at once both beautiful and cruel:

November 30th Monday. Snowing fast. About 4 or 5 feet deep, no drifts. Looks as likely to continue as when it commenced. No living thing without wings can get about.
December 10th Thursday. Snowed fast all night with heavy squalls of wind. Continues still to snow, the sun peeping through the clouds once in about three hours…looks likely to continue snowing. Don't know the depth of the snow-- maybe 7 feet.

December 25th Began to snow yesterday about 12 o’clock and snowed all night and snows yet rapidly. Great difficulty in getting wood—John & Edwd. has to get. I am not able. Offered our prayers to God this Christmas morning. The prospect is appalling but hope in God. Amen.

December 31st Last of the year, may we with God’s help spend the coming year better than the past, which we propose to do if Almighty God will deliver us from our present dreadful situation… Looks like another snow storm. Snow storms are dreadful to us. Snow very deep…

January 13th Snowing fast, higher than the shanty--must be 13 feet deep… dreadful to look at.

February 12th A warm thawy morning. We hope, with the assistance of Almighty God, to be able to live to see the bare surface of the earth once more. O God of Mercy grant it, if it be thy holy will, Amen.

February 26th Froze hard last night. Martha’s jaw swelled with the toothache. Hungry times in camp… Mrs Murphy said here yesterday that [she] thought she would commence on Milt and eat him. I don’t [think] that she has done so yet, it is distressing. The Donnos… commenced to eat the dead people four days ago. They did not succeed that day or next in finding their cattle, then under ten or twelve feet of snow...

March 1st So fine and pleasant. Froze hard last night. Ten [rescuers] arrived this morning from Bear Valley with provisions; we are to start in two or three days [to descend the mountain toward civilization]. There is amongst them some old ones who say the snow will be here until June.
The suffocating snow, the unrelenting cold, and the unmitigated sadness that underscores these terse entries bear witness to Mr. Breen’s realization that nature pays no heed to rank or position, nor to any of man’s contrivances of self-importance. The members of the Donner Party knew, in a very personal way, the ravaging beauty of nature. That something as lovely and delicate as snowflakes can force good people into unthinkable acts, is a striking dissonance.

After six days we got our central heating and four wheel drive back; the house and garden didn’t escape unscathed, but we were thankful, nonetheless—others in our neighborhood fared far worse. But the Donner Party had little other than each other. Just the elements and man’s poor protection from them. And the necessity of choosing between unacceptable alternatives—what Woolf would call “anguish that cuts the heart asunder.” And yet, the membrane that keeps Woolf’s two beauties—laughter and anguish—apart can be surprisingly thin. As thin today as it was in 1847.