Storm Warning

Nick Offerman's Emmy and Preparing For a Change in the Weather

The Emmys were this weekend. I love award shows, I truly do. I love the actors, the art, the clothes, the fuss. I love watching people I have never met, but watched grow, slink past the cameras in gowns and suits. I love it all because it’s so far from my everyday life. These people spend more on dry cleaning in a year than I spent buying my car, but I don’t care. I can’t turn down a good story. And the Emmy’s are nothing if not awarding good storytellers.

Nick Offerman won his first Emmy for his portrayal of Bill in HBO’s The Last of Us. If you haven’t watched the third (and only) episode he’s featured in, you should. Holy crow, you should.

But if you’re not going to, I’ll summarize:

The third episode of the series is basically a stand-alone movie. It’s the story of one man surviving the apocalypse alone on his urban homestead. One day, four years into aftermath of a dying world, another man falls into one of his booby traps - a pit he dug in his front yard. Bill approached the hole with a rifle, ready to shoot.

That man he trapped turns out to be the love of his life, and they spend the next twenty years growing old and taking care of each other. None of this is spoilers for what happens to them, or to the show, but it was easily one of the most beautiful hours of television I have ever watched.

I think that episode with Nick was the closest I’ve come to seeing someone like me on television. This is somewhat confusing, as I do not identify as a man, but I am a single homosexual that over prepares for everything who would be relieved at the downfall of civilization, so there’s that.

I bring it up because that episode moved me in ways I wasn’t prepared for. I know what it is like to need to create a safe space around you, become untouchable by circumstance, become distant and isolated to protect yourself from people and a world that doesn’t want you in it. I lived that. I am that. And then I watched him slowly unravel with love, let down his guard, and allow someone to change everything.

I think about that episode a lot. I even bought the Linda Ronstadt album from the episode at a local used book store this summer. I didn’t want to forget what I watched, because the message of the episode was so hopeful, so simple:

You shouldn’t only prepare for suffering.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s okay to prepare for a life where things work out. To understand that the best years of your life can happen in middle age. To know that love can surprise the hell out of you when you least expect it. That it’s not only worth everything, it is everything.

Anyway, something to think about as I prepare for a storm heading my way right now. Hard to avoid with Linda singing on the turntable as I get out the emergency candles and charge my headlamp.

There’s a warning about a change in the weather. Tonight heavy rain, thunderstorms, and high winds are predicted to roar through the county. Alerts for 50+mph gusts and flooding are blowing up my phone. An additional 1/4” of rain is supposedly dumping on the already-oversaturated ground currently holding inches of snow.

The springs on the property are practically geysers, overflowing and sending rivulets down mountain in every direction. The well I use for my drinking water is leaking from the cap and icing over in the night. I was so worried it was going to burst I called a professional to come inspect it. It cost me a hundred dollars to have a man look at it and tell me I worry too much.

If the weather arrives as cautioned there will be power outages, flooding, downed trees, and closed roads. To think I’ll escape any hardship is ridiculous, so I prepare. Hopefully, it’s not worse than a few downed trees, some water in the basement, and a day without power but you never know. In the winter of 2021, enough water collected beside the house from a rainstorm over snow the bathroom floor had to be ripped out and replaced, and that was getting off easy.

To prepare for tonight I went out and got a few extra days worth of feed, ran a few luxury errands (I was out of tea and honey), but all the real preparation for this kind of thing happens on farm. Things like making sure everyone has food and bedding in their shelter areas and not in the usual, open, feeding areas is one precaution I take. Don’t even give them a reason to get out of their sheds or pole barns in the night or early morning.

I have all the oil lamps filled and ready. The house will be loaded with firewood, and handy access to fire-starting supplies so I am not wasting time I could be repairing tree-warped fences chopping kindling. Hawks come inside. Horses get blankets. The dog bowls are overfilled and I have a couple gallons of water on standby. You know, the usual stuff.

I do wish there was someone here to ride it out with. I think nature is less intimidating when you have a witness beside you. I never worried about weather when I had a partner here because I felt whatever happened, there was another person here to help deal with it. But I don’t think it’s realistic to think I’ll be in that position again anytime short of the apocalypse, so I am trying to be the other person I count on, indefinitely.

I do have this fantasy that friends will come visit the farm and get snowed in during a power outage and all the work and preparations this life entails will shine. I fantasize about making cozy nests near the wood stove for them, handing them cups of hot coffee by a cracking fire in the morning while bacon sizzles on the stovetop and snow squalls dance outside the glass doors. Let them peruse my books, stacked everywhere and anywhere. Show them a life so simple and pure it makes them ache to leave it…

All of my fantasies are about taking care of things, about being needed. I think that’s why I became a farmer. Because even if the world ends I still matter, even if it’s just to sheep on a hill.

I hope the storm rides gentle and easy. I will say I am glad to live where I do. I don’t envy anyone whose land is exposed to wind and weather. I like that my farm is tucked into the side of a mountain, and the eastern side at that. Most storms come from the west, and I like that this farm is halfway down the opposite side of the gales, tucked into a hollow like that scene in Jurassic Park where Grant and the kids hide under that fallen tree while the running herd of Gallimimus leap past them.

And, while there is a downside to living on a winding country road lined with tree-draped power lines, that’s also the general extent of the damage around here - loss of power. Flooding, true flooding, isn’t a worry halfway up a mountain. )At least gravity has my back there.) All I can hope is nothing falls on the house, Subaru, or outbuildings. I park strategically. The big maple was trimmed back so no branches would crash on the roof this summer. I do what I can. I hope for the best.

Maybe I should be digging a hole in the front yard?

Regardless, wish me luck.
Here it comes.

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Oh, and congratulations Nick, if you ever happen upon this. Couldn’t be more deserved. Your work was beautiful and meant so much. Murray, too. Thank you, sir.