We Are Unprepared (31 page)

TWENTY-SEVEN

Meet me at Mountain Roasters at 10:00 a.m.

THOSE WERE THE
email instructions I received from Pia on the morning of our planned reunion. I had expected to meet her at the shelter and was oddly excited about showing her the life I'd been living in those weeks, to fold our separate experiences together again. But something had changed with her ride and now she wanted to meet downtown.

Exactly three establishments had reopened in Isole since The Storm and the coffee shop was one of them. I had heard from others who'd taken the shuttle bus into town that the coffee tasted odd (there was something strange about the water, despite the state's insistence on its safety) and you could pay only in cash, but the muffins were as good as ever. So I dressed as lightly as possible, in anticipation of a hot day, and decided to walk the two miles into downtown to meet Pia that morning. I had five borrowed dollars in my pocket.

I don't know what I envisioned for our meeting, but I was optimistic and entirely open-minded about it. Despite all that had happened between us, and the magnetic pull I felt toward Maggie, I still considered a fresh start with my wife. I was sure that if she told me she wanted me, I would go. Repairs would need to be made and some bad habits broken, but if Pia wanted to do it again and better, that seemed reasonable to me as I walked along the side of the road, considering the possibilities for how our reunion would unfold.

At the end of my walk, it was a relief to step out of the hot sun and into the dark, aromatic cave of Mountain Roasters. There was one empty table near the front window, so I took a dog-eared copy of the previous day's
Burlington Free Press
and sat down to wait for Pia. I didn't have the patience to read the articles. Instead, I kept one eye on the door and scanned the national headlines, surprised by how little I knew about what The Storm had done to the rest of the world: Asian Markets Plummet after Storm's Wrath, New York City Transpo Continues Indefinite Closure, Unexplained Smog Plume Grows Over Youngstown... It was all too large to comprehend. The physical, economic and institutional collapse that The Storm had created seemed endless. This rattled me. I had no intention of leaving Isole but had been comforted by a vague belief that there was somewhere better to escape to, which was apparently not the case.

“Sometimes it's better not to know,” I heard Pia say from behind me.

I jumped up from my chair and threw my arms around her. She seemed thinner and smaller than before; her embrace was weaker.

“I missed you,” I said.

She let me hold her for another fraction of a second before gently pushing back and taking a chair across from me at our small table. I sat down as well, grinning widely for the first time in weeks.

“I missed you, too.” She nodded, not exactly smiling.

“How was your ride? How do you feel? Do you want some tea or something?” I rushed through each word, unsure of where to start.

Pia shook her head. “No, no, I'm fine. I just wanted to talk, really.”

“Okay, great. Let's talk, then.” I took her fidgeting hands in mine and held them still. It wasn't clear whether she liked it or not, but I couldn't stop. I felt strange sitting across a table that seemed too large in a room filled with strangers.

Pia took a long breath before speaking. Apparently, we weren't going to spend any time chatting about small things. “Ash, we need to get out of here,” she announced.

“Out of the coffee shop?”

“No, out of Isole,” she said. “You didn't think we'd stay after this, did you? There's nothing left here.”

“I don't think there's anything left anywhere.”

“There's more...if we go far.” Pia wasn't discussing this; she was telling me. “Remember Benny, my friend from college? His parents have a huge condo in Boulder. Some of us are going out there.”

“Some of
us
? Who else are you talking to? This decision has already been made?” I felt the familiar choking sensation return to my throat. “But this is our home. I love it here.”

“You don't love it here,” Pia corrected. “You're comfortable and it's familiar, and that's what you like.”

I shook my head. “It's more than that. I feel invested in Isole. August is here. August is here.”

Pia rolled her eyes. “You can't stay.”

She pulled out a tube of lip gloss and circled it around and around her lips with great concentration, as though it was the most important task in the world at that moment. She wasn't listening to me. Pia had made up her mind and was sure that I would follow her.

“Why do you want me to come?” I asked.

Pia looked startled. “Because you're my husband, obviously.”

“That's not a good reason, Pia. It sounds like the right reason, but it's not. The right reasons are you love me and can't live without me, and you care about what happens to me. Any of those would have been the right reason.”

She waved her hand, as if I was being overly dramatic and wasting her time. And with that gesture, I felt a stirring deep in my stomach. It started as a rumble and then shuddered through my entire body like a small earthquake. I realized that I felt nothing for the person sitting across from me anymore. There was the weight of a shared history, but nothing that pulled us closer in the present. There would be no fresh starts between us, not ever. This was the end. And just as I wasn't powerful enough to mend things between us, I realized that I wasn't powerful enough to be solely responsible for what was broken either. With that realization and the little earthquake that passed through my body, all the guilt and shame that I'd been carrying around since the day I left Pia in The Storm fell away.

It became instantly clear to me that this line in the sand before us was a gift—maybe the only gift—of The Storm. And I refused to feel guilty about that. The Storm had blasted wide-open all the small fractures that previously existed in our community and society at large—and our relationship was no different. I decided then to learn from the destruction and move on. I would rebuild something stronger, on a sounder foundation for an uncertain future.

I stood up from the table with tears in my eyes, paused for a moment to steady myself and walked out. Leaving that coffee shop without Pia meant leaving behind the last real thing that had been mine before The Storm. I had nothing now. But it was a bountiful nothing; I'd gained a big, hopeful unwritten future with that nothingness. It felt right.

TWENTY-EIGHT

AMERICANS TEND TO
shine in the aftermath of disaster, coming together to reboot and rebuild. We promise to remake our great cities—this time bigger and better—as a demonstration of our will. Our leaders talk about the endurance of the American spirit and an unwillingness to accept defeat. This time was no different. The people in power assured us that America's resolve could never be broken. We were driving toward success! But that same relentless push to build and grow, grow, grow was what created this problem—not Americans alone, but we had a disproportionately large role in the overheating of our angry planet. For as long as growth defines success, won't this continue, we wondered to ourselves.

In the smallest, subtlest ways, I could sense a change in the people around me after The Storm. There was a hesitation to rebuild as big and bloated as we had before. Instead of rushing to erect grand, defiant houses where the old ones had been decimated, more modest dwellings were built. Demand for consumer goods dropped across the country—and stayed low—despite all that had been lost. And states spent their dwindling resources slowly, on roads and bridges at the expense of grand symbols like football stadiums and shopping malls. There's an immediate cost to this, of course. Low consumer spending has kept the economy at a sluggish pace and new jobs are scarce. But this slower, more deliberate recovery feels safer somehow. It's moving in the right direction and there's no risk of its reversal.

Like a shared religion, we've embraced simplicity with a renewed fervor in the Northeast Kingdom. The hard lines that divided us in the months before The Storm are dissolving again and we're returning to our roots, believing in the people we know and the things we make. Even Rodney Riggins realized soon after The Storm that his message held no power here anymore. The last I heard, he had a new congregation in South Carolina and a Riggins-branded line of prepper bugout kits. He left no lasting mark on our community.

Like a lot of people, I live closer to town now, within walking distance of the food co-op and the library. My small, sparse apartment is one of four in a large house just off Main Street. It's private, but not so private that we can't glean a lot about each other's lives through the walls. I share a car with a few other people in the building in a loose agreement that works surprisingly well for the time being. On Saturdays, I get together with a bunch of locals to repair a network of hiking trails that the state has no money to fix. We figure it will take about a year of Saturday hikes to restore the trail between Isole and Newport. It's a long time, but it will be done right and hold up better in the next storm.

I share all of this new life with August as his legal foster parent. As a single guy, it's unconventional, but most conventions are useless now and the rules have bent. Bev The Social Worker helped expedite the process once I got settled, and it has been as transformational as The Storm itself. August and I have settled into a comfortable routine, moving in a small footprint around our little town, but filling it up completely. School, work, cooking, hiking, reading, sleeping. Apparently, I needed these things as much as August. We're both better than we've ever been. Most important, August is himself—building forts and talking to birds and resisting reality at every turn. I'm going to fight reality off for him as long as I can. He'll grow out of the stories in his head eventually, but I won't let that happen a day sooner than he's ready to part with them.

Work dried up for my design firm as swiftly as The Storm's waters and we were forced to shut down. I worry about the few staff members who had kids and wish I could have done more to help them. For me, the end was a blessing. I volunteered to help the Vermont Tourism Board with some of their public outreach efforts in the wake of The Storm, and they eventually hired me as a part-time web designer. The pay is minimal, but so are my expenses. And it works for August.

I like this life. Maggie and August and I spend nearly every day together with Badger always a few feet away. She picks us up in the afternoon when school is out and I've finished my work for the day, and we drive back up to her house to chip away at repairs. Her home was badly damaged by The Storm, but it's salvageable. We cleared the yard of debris first, then pumped the water from the root cellar, refinished the wood floors and rebuilt the deck. It will look prettier than ever after the interior and exterior painting is done, which should be another month or so. August and I will move in when the repairs are all made and the divorce is final, which I'm looking forward to but not rushing. Like so many things in our new life, we're building slowly and sustainably.

My body is changing now, too. I'm using my hands, my arms, my back to build this new life, doing things I didn't know I could do. I feel physically exhausted at the end of the day and I sleep deeply each night. On a recent trip to visit my parents—who I see more often now—my father joked about the primitive work that has displaced many of my old digital tasks. He didn't say more, but I saw pride in his eyes. There's so much of him in me. It took too long for me to recognize my father's greatness. My father—the tough, rural, lawyer–outdoorsman–civic leader that I find myself striving to emulate most days. I don't say this out loud, but he knows. We chop and stack wood together with August in tow. I ask for his advice on our home repairs. That's enough for us.

Back at Maggie's house, we laugh through the hard work. She holds the wood in place while I pound a hammer into our new bookshelves and we debate which finish to use. I have to remind her to slow down and listen to her body now that she's pregnant. We're having a baby! What a strange, unexpected reminder of nature's resilience that is. An irrational vote of confidence in the future's brightness, despite so much evidence to the contrary. Months before, there was only me. Even in marriage, there was really only ever just me. And now I'm on the eve of having two children and a perfect, peculiar family. At the end of the day, I rest my hand on the paint-splattered clothes that stretch across her growing belly and marvel at how full life is today. She's growing—we're growing—in the most surprisingly wonderful ways.

TWENTY-NINE

THE LANDSCAPE OF
the Northeast Kingdom was defined a few million years ago by the Ice Age. Glacial advances and recessions created its fields and forests and the melting water carved its dramatic mountains and waterways. And before anything could grow again, the vast, lifeless desert of ice had to cede to a warmer new climate.

It's not so different now. The Storm and flooding wiped out most of the life around us. The sophisticated network of wildlife and botany that lived here for hundreds of years has been evicted. What's left this time are the humans and the insects. The insects fared best of all in the poststorm world.

I want to believe it will regenerate, that another epic cycle of life is beginning today. I want to know that two hundred years from now, Isole's graveyard of trees will be home to
new
old-growth forests, where elder pines provide shade to eager saplings and low-lying shrubs; that the woodland homes for native wildlife will be restored and their lanes of travel bustling again. Most of all, I want to believe that the instinctive rituals of every species will still adjust predictably with the shift of each season. The black bear must be able to rely on the cold and the scarcity of food as a signal to rest for winter. In this fantasy, the forest still suffers traumas—there will be wildfires and early frosts—but only as prescribed by nature for regenerative purposes, routine ailments to build up immunity. I want to again believe in nature's invincibility.

None of this will happen, I know. The planet we live on now is fundamentally different from the one that spawned the forests I fell in love with. Everything is changing. Something will grow here; that's already begun. But it will be different. I wonder often how these changes will transform the culture of the Northeast Kingdom, a place that has defined itself in relationship to nature.

Amid all the loss of The Storm—my marriage, everything I own and the identity of my community—the loss I feel most deeply is that of the natural world. My Vermont woods not only look fundamentally different, they
feel
different. It's as if the composition of the atmosphere has changed just noticeably enough to make me aware of my breath.

We are animals from the past in a future habitat.

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