Disaster Strikes Coloma -- Hooray!

I've seen 2012 three times now. I'm one of those people who cheers as L.A. tips skyward and slides into the sea, who upsets my neighbor's popcorn with wild fist-pumping when Yellowstone blows. Of course, as a rafter, my favorite part is the tsunami -- the sublime whitewater experience. Every time, I've left the theater wondering how I, and my community, would react to cataclysm. I've let my imagination run wild about the kinds of disaster global climate change might bring to Coloma. Floods? Fires? Anarchy? Am I the sort of person who could make a Winnebago soar across a yawning lava-filled abyss? Would our eco-friendly, solar and waste-veggie oil-run camp be an oasis for refugees, or would we have to beat back the mob with Ma Lode paddles and squirt guns?

Well, on Monday, December 7th, we got our very own disaster. A severe winter storm blanketed the Coloma valley in snow -- practically unheard of at our elevation. Our foothill oaks are not built to shed snow like pines are, so, interrupting the eerie silence of new snowfall, we heard cracks as loud as gunshots ricocheting through the valley as weak branches and trunks split and fell. The woods were a tangle of broken limbs and downed power lines. The roads were blocked and, along with 36,000 other El Dorado County residents, we had no power.

Neighbors we hadn't seen in ages came outside in their galoshes and polar fleece to admire the sparkly stuff and survey the damage. Jim Baldini was out pushing downed limbs off the road to make an emergency evacuation route before we even made coffee on our gas stove. Not for the first time, I was grateful to live in a place where people are comfortable using backhoes and chainsaws. For the first time, I really paid attention to my dad's instructions on getting our generator going, and as never before, I appreciated the golden fossil fuel we poured into its belly. As much as I love renewables, liquid energy is awfully nice in an emergency.

Since there were no phones, no computers, no television, and the roads to Placerville were dicey, the only thing to do was to go sledding. First, I fulfilled my childhood fantasy of sliding down Mountain Murphy, and the next day Scott Scheu, Shawn Dunkely, Chris Covington and I took saucers out to Cool and spent a perfect day racing down the steep graceful foothill saddles. More than once, I caught myself thinking, "If global climate change means more snow days in Coloma, bring it on."

Although I don't really think that, and certainly don't like the projections about declining snowpack in the Sierras due to warming temperatures, there is still something thrilling about living on this earth, with its immense, chaotic fluctuations. When things are predictable, it's easy to go to sleep, forgetting about the forces that can destroy our power lines and houses and cars and all the other structures we rely on in the course of an ordinary Monday morning. I think that's part of what I find so exciting and addictive about boating and all the other things I love to do outside -- and why I love disaster movies. They give us the physical jolt we need to remember how tiny we are, and what a big fast world we're riding.

-- Emily Underwood