Electrified Firewood

‘Disconcerting’ is a good word to explain the feelings when you finally fell asleep at 2:07 AM.

At 1:25 AM I woke to the beginnings of a wonderful thunder storm that was nothing short of spectacular. Talk about the wonder of the heavens. The lightening flashed and the thunder rolled. Some seemed to be just over the house.

Now I love a good storm – and loud and good storm will do great things for our yard and flowers. Everyone knows that.

Wondering from my bed to the front porch was the next action. I stood watching the rain pelt the pavement of the street. No wind just rain – lots of it. I looked up at the dark clouds rolling over the city slowly and at that moment I saw the new moon appearing through the branches of the huge tree in our front yard.

Wait a minute – there is no moon in the sky tonight – it is completely overcast from the heavy rain cloud laying on us now. But this moon was bright… and twinkled through the branches brightly.

Then there was a second moon…. I was now more awake. It WAS NOT A MOON or MOONS – it was a fire ball in the top of the tree as the water soaked tree bent forward lower and lower touching the power lines.

BUT it was not just any power line. The city has blessed us with a 20,000 volt line – six lines actually all carrying vital juice to our community. It is a major power line.

The wet tree was wet all the way to the ground… inside and out. As it touched the tree branches 20,000 volts or some portion of it made a complete circuit to the ground and ZAP – POP – Snapple – CRACKLE – the old tree burst into flame at the top.

For one half hour there was an on going sizzle in the tree top – which is about 65 to 70 feet above the drive way.

I stood bare foot on the driveway looking up – in puddles of water… with about a potential of 20,000 volts finding courses to the ground.

Come to think of it as I looked on… when the branch touched the wire it burst into flames and then as it pulled away – a mini lightening bolt was arcing from wire to tree branch.
I stepped carefully out of the puddles and back on to the deck… wiped my wet feet off and looked up.

That was when ‘Disconcerting’ came into mind. I wasn’t sure if more was going to happen as I slipped into bed again. The breeze was picking up and whatever happened – would happen anyway.

I had the weirdest dream after that.

This morning a number of branches are looking like they have been too close to the fire of a wiener roast. They are brown and singed on the ends. There are smaller pieces laying on the ground.

The wonder of last night was the fact that I could sleep soundly and then wake to a whole new world with small bird singing.

‘Disconcerting’ just simply vanished and was washed away with the water that rolled down the street.

Today…
The Public Utilities guys just left. Apparently the Department will have to cause an outage for the whole community early next week – or sooner if more storms come – to shut off the 20,000 volts of power. Then they will cut back about 20 feet of branches. They told me today the minimum clearance a tree branch should be from the line is 10 feet. At this point we have maybe between 3 inches or up to 1 foot for the whole top of the tree.

I am going to get more firewood soon! Electrified Firewood… it aught to burn well.

~ Murray Lincoln ~
www.murraylincoln.com