Every New Season
For everything there is a season,
and a time for
every matter under
heaven
(Ecclesiastes 3:1)
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Every New Season For everything there is a season, and a time for
every matter under
heaven
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ESSAYS ON LIVING AT HOLDEN VILLAGE BY MARY KOCH
This page is dedicated to the memory of my late husband, John E. Andrist, who died at the age of 75 on Sept. 25, 2007. Now I am living for the two of us. Life moves from one season to the next. Winter 2011-12 coincides with a new season in my own life. I have moved from my home of more than 30 years to Holden Village in Washington State's North Cascade Mountains. It is said to be the most remote community in the lower 48 to be inhabited year-round. I invite you to join me each week as I explore Every New Season in this spectacular setting. If you would like to receive my essays directly by e-mail, or if you would like to respond to me, please e-mail: Previous essays in this series: My first snowshoeing trek was neither what I anticipated nor desired ... Thursdays are "Hunger
Awareness Day" in the village, which means we get
rice for This cozy little village snuggled in its mountain valley can be a scary place ... If I thought I would escape the ghosts of Christmas past by coming to this isolated mountain village, I was dead wrong ,,, When I told a younger friend that I was moving to Holden Village, she asked with confusion: "What is that? Some kind of assisted living?" ... This is my third series of weekly essays. The first series, Journal of Healing, described my years of caregiving for my late husband. The second series, A Widow Bit, explored a caregiver's life after her loved one has died. To read essays from these series, go to: Mary Koch is a veteran news reporter and editor. She was an Associated Press editor before marrying John E. Andrist in 1979, when she joined him in editing and publishing the Omak (Washington) Chronicle. They sold the newspaper in 1996. She continues to work as a writer and editor, currently living in Holden Village, Wash. |
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POWER TO THE PEOPLE I had a dream the other night about Holden Village. Most people here would classify it as a nightmare. In my dream, it was a beautiful, blue-sky morning with gleaming white, fresh snow all around (so far, not that different from reality). I was on the porch of my chalet snapping on skis – downhill skis! Just a few feet from the chalet was a chairlift rising to the top of the ridge above the village. It all felt familiar, like so many of the ski resorts my late husband and I loved to visit in winter. You could hear the grind of the lift motor and the metal clanking of chairs as they moved through the mechanism. My alarm clock woke me and I flipped the light switch to – darkness. The power was out. The grinding and clanking in my dream were, in reality, roofalanches. A real avalanche had blocked the stream that powers the generator that turns on the lights. Holden Village is off the grid, powered by an intricate and fragile combination of locally produced hydroelectricity, wood for heating and diesel for emergencies. Because the towering mountains block most direct sunlight in winter, solar is not feasible. Power outages are frequent, though I dare not complain – we heard the news of the terrific ice storms and lengthy outages in the Puget Sound area. Outages make one mindful of the great conveniences and blessings of electrical power. One is especially mindful when one is stark naked and about to step into the shower but instead, one is plunged into a black void. One gropes along the bathroom walls in search of a door, hoping to open it for a shaft of dim light. One also hopes there’s no one in the hallway. On a recent powerless afternoon, with our computers of no use, a co-worker and I cleaned our corner of the office. It was something like an archeological dig through layers of dust. Obviously no one had cleaned in years, and I wondered what my predecessors did during power outages. As for my dream, Holden is ideally set up to be a ski resort. Thank God, no one was interested in making such an investment 50-some years ago when the former mining town was for sale. It takes copious power to operate a ski hill. The vision of massive power lines strung up the lakeside and through the forest is not a welcome one. The power was back on long enough last night so we could watch a documentary on nuclear waste. It was part of the college course on environmental ethics that students are taking here during their January term. The film underscored how we as a nation are eagerly consuming nuclear power but politically incapable of dealing with the waste. The crisis is imminent. “My generation has a lot of problems to solve,” mused a 19-year-old sitting near me. I have nothing but hope for his generation, and a lot of dismay for my own.
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