Greetings readers & contributors! I’m happy & relieved to be back after my forced “off-grid wilderness vacation”: 2 weeks of no power, phone, Internet, or water. Residing in remote forest, I can accept these challenges as a small price to pay for living here. Over several decades, the longest outtage we’ve experienced was 3 days. However, the island I am on was one of the hardest hit by the Thursday, Dec 20 storm & it’s taken an army of utility workers & first responders to return life to normal.
Remnants of power & telecomm utility pole, corner of my property line
I want to wish all of our readers a Happy New Year on behalf of the team at Puget Sound Media – Jason Remington, Steven L Smith, Victor Stredicke; also our contributing editors Ron DeHart, Duane Smart & Tom Layson. Thank you all for making PSM a part of YOUR day & we are looking forward to great things for everyone in 2019 – more histories, more news, more perspective & more entertainment! We also extend thanks and acknowledge our “news stringers” – you men & women know who you are! Our resident “Broadcasting Archaeologist” Steven will be taking a short, well-earned holiday in the sun, as I prepare to get myself back into the daily routine here.
Giant Douglas fir, approx 300-400 years old & perfectly healthy…until it’s root system gave way & brought down 4 other trees with it.
If any of you have sent me recent emails in the past few weeks & not gotten a reply, I apologize & can’t even be sure I have all the messages off my email server at this point.
A group of Douglas firs blown across our seasonal creek. These obliterated the power pole in the first pic shown.
Next door neighbor’s son built a brand new cabin last summer – toast! He did manage to get all of his stuff out of the destroyed building. One other house on our road was also destroyed, 3 others had trees lying on their roofs requiring crane trucks to lift & remove them.
My final words on this horror show my wife & I endured are simple words of advice: one can NEVER have too many batteries (AA & AAA) or candles, pails for collecting rainwater to flush toilets, dedicated ‘clean’ pails just for use washing dishes & rinsing vegetables.
