The February Full Moon of the 27th reminded me to keep the faith, hang on to hope, and to know that change in any form, can always lead us to places of increased strength.
Full Moons are always a time of illumination, of seeing a new light at the end of another dark tunnel. This full moon came after many challenging events all over my city, county, and state.
Oregon had a huge, very impressive monster of an ice storm. When it was over we'd almost all lost power that lasted from a few days to many, many weeks. Even now there are homes in more isolated places and higher elevations that are more than a month out.
And yes, so many many of you did as well! All over the U.S. in all seasons we are now having these horrific "climate events'. My heart goes out to all of you. You are all in my thoughts and prayers.
But for us here, it was not the huge powers outages, it was the complete loss of many of our favorite trees and the damage to many, many of the hundreds of trees we planted 40 years ago. Many of these grew from tiny seedlings to very large and to us, very beautiful and large ones.
Our long driveway's access to our once country road was totally filled with trees down and broken limbs as far as our eyes could see. Our long lane and drives and our from and back yards as well as parts of our fields including the one with our chicken coop.
Electrical transmitters explored all over the Willamette Valley for miles and miles and miles. Everything was dark but the skies were filled with the relentless crackling and snapping and plunging falls of large trees.
Such a display of nature's agony. The loss of lives and often the livability of houses. After our vicious losses figuring our wildfires and the incredible challenges of Covid-19 it truly seemed like too much. But like most Americans we held on and rose up again.
We used our small tractor and old power saws and my husband began clearing not only our way but the way of our neighbors. Many far younger than our seven plus decades they didn't have the gift of immediately coping. We did.
Our son and son in law were eventually able to come and help and boy did they! They climbed up tall trees all around my husband's work shop cutting off broken limbs, all around the total perimeter of our house and front and back yards removing giant criss-crossesd limbs known as "widow makers" that are trapped by still upright limbs but could fall and tragically hurt or kill someone underneath in the future.
Power sawing non-stop and climbing both at once passing tools, towels for kneeling on slippery narrow limbs and sawing limb after limb to then fall below.
I am grateful we have power again. Grateful that my husband worked full long days sawing up lane and road limbs and tractor pushing big piles over to the sides so we could get to the road itself in a day. And blessed to have family help when they did and put in a long hard day getting most damaged limbs sawed down and picked up before heading home to belated dinners.
Grateful that our homes are all fine, power restored to most of us in a week and most of all in the time it took me to take, save, label and upload these photos and finslly writing this blog post (4 and a half hours just to do that on my phone losing 3/4 of it to a blogger photo wipe put glitch!) Without satellite wifi its a chore working on my phone but 5 or 6 or 7 years later, I'm still doing it!
After all the month wasn't all challenging! I managed to sew a few more of the ever ongoing face masks, a tooth fairy pillow for my first granddaughter's first teeth loss, a bowed stretchy headband and ponytail wrap.
And best of all in the middle of chaos I got through the other challenges to tackle the big one Covid-19 and was vaccinated!
Oh the changes in just one year!
Michele Bilyeu Creates With Heart and Hands as she shares her imaginative, magical, and healing journey from Alaska to Oregon. Creating, designing, sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting... from my heart and with my hands
