I had never heard anything like it. We had a windstorm rushing through the forest, soaking everything with torrential rain, over two inches in two hours, I knew that there would be flooding on the main road, and the river would rise too, luckily we were far enough away and wouldn't get flooded, but the access roads all would. I stayed hunkered down in my house, all my equipment was in the barn, and hopefully that would survive, I had built it to withstand hurricanes, so sixty mile per hours winds should be fine.
It was times like this that tested you when you lived off grid in the wilderness, I had a generator, and my solar charged batteries were fully charged, so I should be alright, but you never know these days, weather is just unpredictable. Global warming I supposed, but they had warned us it was coming seventy odd years ago, but for every government it was too far in the future for them to prepare for it, and now they blamed us for having gas fires and BBQ's.
We all knew it was lies, one volcano could put more greenhouse gases out in one eruption, than the entire continent could in a year. But the globalists held sway and we all just followed on. That was one of the reasons I went off grid. I was self-reliant, I had my own water supply and my own electricity supply. I had game in the forest and I killed and butchered my own food, and had chickens that laid eggs for me. I also grew some vegetables to eat.
Every now and then I would drive into town for supplies, diesel for my equipment, cartridges for my guns, and if push came to shove, I also had some crossbows and a stack of bolts. Every now and again, Dad would come and stay, and we would tackle projects just a little too ambitious for me to do on my own, sometimes Mum came too, but rarely, she was a city girl, and she struggled if she wasn't in reach of a coffee shop.
I put more logs on the log furnace and damped it down. It would keep pumping out heat for a good twelve hours before I needed to top it up, and I had a ready supply of wood, offcuts from my wood mill, plus unusable wood, only suitable for the furnace. It was just this wind, it was so darn nosy, pervading everything, there was just no escape, and the problem for me was, that if I did manage to shut it out, then I wouldn't hear if anything went wrong outside. No, I had to listen, but the listening was just awful.
I sat huddled on the sofa, listening to the sounds around the house, the sway of branch against branch, the rain on the metal roofs, and the sound of twigs and branches caught in the wind as they battered rain against the side of the house. I didn't have to worry about trees falling and damaging anything important, I had felled every tree around the homestead buildings, nothing could fall on the house or the outbuildings.
I had checked the pigs earlier, they were hunkering down too, in their metal sties, well anchored down and filled with hay, they would be fine. The meat birds were also away in their coop, dry and safe. It was just the noise. Eventually, after about another hour the sounds changed.
The wind was still there, but the rain had eased, and now the wind had changed direction, it was coming from the north, not the southwest, everything sounded different. I quickly checked the furnace, there was room for another log, I added it and headed to bed. There was little I could do tonight, simply keep the house warm and hot water available for my shower in the morning.
I lay in bed, dozing, keeping half an ear out for falling trees, but I heard nothing and dozing turned to sleep, exhaustion had won and when I finally woke up, it was to a very strange light, a very white light. I dragged myself out of bed and threw my robe on and looked out of my window. Everything was white, but it didn't look like snow. It just looked very cold.
I threw some clothes on and opened the door, quickly shutting it again, it was bitterly cold out there, too cold for the lightweight clothes I had thrown on. Back in and several more layers on, I once more braved the cold. It was eerie outside, everywhere was sheer ice, I could hardly stand. I went back in for my spikes, it had been a while since I had last worn them, they were right at the back of the cupboard.
Suitably spiked up, I ventured outside for the third time, my feet crunching as I walked. The rain that had fallen yesterday and overnight was frozen solid, I was walking around in an ice world, I had never seen anything like it outside TV, everywhere was a sort of blue white yet transparent. There were icicles hanging off the house several feet long, and as I walked towards the forest, the trees were frozen, icicles making the branches bow down, all the trees seemed arched.
There was a loud crack to my left and as I turned to the direction of the sound, I saw a cloud of ice crystals erupting in a cloud. A large branch had fallen, and then there was another to my right, and more behind me, and I was stood in an amphitheatre of sounds, creaks, cracks and crashes and I was surrounded by clouds of ice.
I turned and walked slowly back to my house, there was nothing I could do, I needed the sun to shine and melt the snow, and that wasn't going to happen, the sky was filled with clouds, and the temperature was still falling. I felt like my world was falling apart behind me, my trees were my livelihood and nature was destroying them, tears poured from my eyes, freezing on my cheeks, I felt bereft.
In the house I added more logs to the log burner and undamped it slightly, I needed heat, I wanted my house hot, my heart was feeling cold, my body needed to be warm. I went up to my bathroom and ran the shower, the water was hot, the burner had done a good job over night. I stripped off my several layers of clothes and got under the running water.
For a moment I just stood there letting the water cascade over me, my body warming, the cold in my heart dissipating. I looked up into the flow, the shower washing away my tears, stinging as I flooded my eyes with clean shower water, each drop a sting, each drop cleansing. I dipped my head and added shampoo to my hair, vigorously rubbing with my fingers, exorcising my despondency.
Suds flowed down my body, tickling as they gathered and dripped from my nipples, stimulating as they ran down my belly into my crease and then dripped from my fourchette, stimulating but I was in no mood for arousal. My world was collapsing in a shower of ice all around me.
I put my robe on, I hadn't bothered drying, I simply wrapped myself in my robe and went and sat in my lounge, taking heat form the furnace, the only heat there was, outside was a frozen wasteland. My trees had frozen, rain had fallen on the trees and frozen adding to the weight of the branches, and then more freezing rain had come, and then more, and it had all frozen adding the wright of inches and inches of ice to the branches, weight that they were never supposed to take.
There was only one possible outcome, I would lose my forest within the next few hours, and all I could do was listen to the ice laden branches crack and then the sound of them crashing to the ground in a shower of ice.
My phone rang; it was my Dad.
"How are you Becky sweetheart?" He asked.
"Alive Dad, unlike my forest which is all dead."
"Freezing rain?" He asked.
"Yes, too much for the trees to handle, I've pretty much lost the lot."
