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Resilience Was Born From My Mistakes
Lessons from mountain life for the land of chronic illness
Ilive on a mountain. Our thermometer outside is always seven to nine degrees colder than the nearest city on the weather app. Clouds often roll in through an open door or window. We are surrounded by ancient trees and dependent on a well and generator in emergencies. There are often surprises.
Some days, I wake up and a fallen limb has busted a pipe or pump. I get a job that frustrates every plan. A thirty-minute error on our generator one December meant that the heater keeping the well pump from freezing failed. We were hauling water from the creek in buckets for days before it could be fixed. That surprise exhausted me.
Once, on the way to school, we met a fallen tree shrouded in fog that blocked the only road off the mountain. A truck pulled up behind me. Within a minute, he pulled a chainsaw out and began cutting movable pieces from the beached tree.
Other trucks steadily arrived and did the same. Four random strangers cleared enough to pass through and someone stayed behind until the power company arrived to complete the task. In the end, I was only delayed fifteen minutes. That surprise awed me.
Some days, I wake up and a light brush of snow has visited every branch and bench…
