We had warning. A dangerous blizzard sweeps across the eastern United States. Be prepared.

The young man stacks firewood on my porch and in the barn. I fill up jugs and a bucket with water in case of a power outage. Pull out candles and battery lanterns.

The storm rolls in after midnight. Snow mixed with sleet and frozen rain. The temperature drops and keeps dropping.

In the morning, still sleety and snowing. Yet, tree limbs and cedars are not fluffy with snow. The snow, it seems, viewed from my window, not all that pretty, as far as snows go. The good news: we did not lose power. But temperatures keep dropping.

I want to write a snow poem. I venture out in my red boots with my black lab, only to realize what I thought was snow is thick slick ice. A neighbor offers her sturdy grandson and his friend to chop my walkway. Another neighbor plows with his tractor, but still ice holds us in its grip. VDOT tries their hand at the road but without much success. Truck blades made for snow, not ice. I call another country boy to hack the parking spot next to my mailbox. He hacks and chops for hours digging out ice like concrete. It grows dark and even colder. Surely, the writers will cancel. Some do, but some still coming. I admire artistic determination. And yet.

I will need a path cut from the road to the walkway for them to make it to the house. I spread wood ashes and salt on the driveway slope.

A writer texts after dark. She is stuck on my road, wheels spinning on ice. I grab my lantern. Her car has rolled into a snow bank on Pine Hill. Leave your car, I tell her. We grab her bags out of the car and inch our way, slipping, nearly falling, up the frozen road back to the house in the dark.

I realize that my third floor heat and air compressors will not work because I had not turned them on during the storm. The furnace and woodstove fires keep me warm. But with writers I need to turn on the heat to the third floor and, now, the compressors huddle next to the house like small ice huts, igloos. I haul heavy space heaters up two flights of stairs to the third floor. The temperature never gets above freezing for over a week.

My bathtub pipe, frozen for days, busts. Water gushes over the hardwood floor. I’m hyperventilating and frenzied, sopping up water with towels. A neighbor answers my panicked call—I’m lucky—tells me to turn off the well-pump. A plumber, I can’t believe he comes, fixes two broken pipes and diagnoses why the writers’ kitchen sink is not draining. But he cannot chop through the ice in the swale to free the drain. The next morning, once again, a neighbor answers my cry for help. He chops and chops with a digging bar. I had never seen a digging bar. Its purpose is digging post holes for fences. A long heavy iron pole or bar with a pointed chisel and sharp blade at one end and at the other end a blunt piece. Maybe this is not really about the treacherous ice, the relentless cold, but the kindness of my country neighbors.

After the Blizzard

I venture out
in knee-high red rubber boots,
praying to be transformed
by Beauty, the world made pure

The roads, the hills, old barns
released from man-made scars, the dark
of rot and neglect, the ugly ruts of ignorance
vanish overnight
blessed and blanketed
the mute snowy fields shimmer like satin

I inch my way across my front yard,
dig each heel into the silver crust.
The stoic maple where in summer
the black snake hides. Now
aglow in crystals and chandeliers of ice.

A world of beauty
Until
I slip, sail headlong into my iron gate
Bust my lip
Bruise my noggin

For love of snow and ice
peoples of the Arctic know
hidden words, another language
siku, quinu, pukka,aputi

Days later, flocks of thirsty robins
flutter in puddles of melted ice,
hundreds of robins
rejoicing
May I join you?

Trudy Hale is the Editor-in-Chief of Streetlight Magazine and runs Porches Writing Retreat in Nelson County, Va. You can find out more about her on www.porcheswritingretreat.com.