Eight days! Stuck behind a mountain of snow. Our prize oak tree split and embedded in our car, stranding us. We were down to one charge on one power pack for one phone (our only lifeline) when power was restored.

Imagine no power for eight days. In the mountains that means no heat, water, lights, or flushing toilets. Oh, we had enough food. I went shopping two days before the storm as did everyone else in the area. I was standing, resting my elbow on my shopping cart’s handle, when a woman in another endless checkout line yelled, “It better snow!” 

It did. Feet of it. It was enjoyable, big fluffy flakes softly piling up on our deck, until a tree demolished our car, and the power went out. After that, we had no way out, nor did our neighbors. We have an excellent wood-burning iron stove and dry wood. We could light our gas stove with matches, but not the oven. We had headlamps, and lanterns of all sorts. Batteries for the ages. Puzzles. And a massive goose-down comforter in the unheated bedroom. We believe the ambient temperature of sheetrock to be forty-four degrees.

Now, if you’ve been paying attention, you know my most recent book Unbecoming a Lady takes place in 1876. That’s where we lived for those eight days. It’s tough. But what I learned is this, it can be done. It takes some reorientation, for sure. On the first day, you figure out what is essential, and how to operate all while praying that the power comes back on. You overuse your phone because it is your only point of contact with the outside world. And, in our case, the only way to file the insurance claim on our destroyed car. Oh, for a horse and sleigh like those used in Cora’s little prairie town of Wanee.

Then you get the endless emails from PG&E telling you they are on site and the power will be up Monday … no Wednesday … no Friday.

As time went on, we ate the food from the freezer in the order it thawed. We ate pretty darn good. One night we dined on coconut shrimp and dim sum. Way better than Cora’s winter mainstays of storage vegetables and salted meat.

We lived Cora Countryman’s life for over a week minus the three-story house to clean and the boarders to feed that define her days. Hard, all-consuming work. All your attention turns to staying warm, clean, and fed. You get up in the morning and light the fire, boil water to make pour-over coffee, scramble eggs, and fry bacon. Forget the toast. Then you gather fresh snow for your coolers and dump water in the toilet tanks until they flush. You melt snow and boil it to wash yourself and the dishes. Put fresh batteries in where needed. Shovel a path through the snow to the wood pile. Then shovel it again. Pull out the old laundry drying rack and set it by the fireplace, so everything is dry for the next day’s shoveling. You get the idea. And when it gets dark huddle around the fire with your puzzle. Then repeat.

My husband and I finished the puzzle, headlamps on our heads. It is striking how well we adapted to life without television, streaming, phones, lights, toilets, running water, and a microwave. Perhaps because games were played outside when we were kids, the telephone was tethered to the wall, and the television was a small square box with three channels. This isn’t to say that we didn’t delight when the microwave went diddle-diddle-dee, happily letting us know the power was back on.

Now, like Cora, I wonder how her mother found time to play Whist three days a week. And I have a deeper understanding of her day-to-day life. Now to write a wintertime mystery!

I am a nature gal, and so the mysteries I write often take place in the great outdoors, where I spend as much time as I can. But getting started is often difficult for me.

Often, before I go hiking, snowshoeing, kayaking, or scuba diving, I ask myself whether the activity will be worth the effort of preparing. The weather might be windy, snowing or raining. I might need to get started on my journey before dawn. I try to be careful and plan for the unexpected, taking a first aid kit, all the appropriate gear for the environment, food and water, a light. And duct tape, an essential for every outdoor expedition. Every year the preparation seems more difficult than the last. Despite all this, I always find that the effort expended is worth it.

Nature has an indescribable majesty and beauty. Even the same place can be experienced differently at different times: a hike might take me through a flower meadow one time and a frosty autumn scene the next, the creeks might be rushing streams or mere trickles. The snow might be mush that will soak my clothes or sparkling icy crystals that will scour my skin if I slide over it.

Watching the sun rise or set over water or mountain peaks, seeing a mountain goat or a weasel or an octopus in its natural habitat is always a deeply moving experience. Underwater, I often meet creatures I can only identify later from a reference book or website.

In the North Cascades, I’ve witnessed avalanches that I used in my most recent novel, Cascade. The slot canyons and natural bridges and rocky trails I explored in Utah became the setting for Endangered. At Mount Rainier, I nearly collided with a bear cub on an overgrown trail. That ended up in my novel, Bear Bait. The underwater antics of sea lions in the Galapagos were featured in several scenes in Undercurrents. Physical challenges and encountering unexpected difficulties, well, those are character development, for both myself and my characters. All good stories have conflict. Ultimately, nature brings us closer to ourselves in ways we sometimes don’t expect it to. So when I’m thinking it might be nice to just stay home and drink my coffee and pet my cats, I tell myself “Get a grip, Pam. Start packing, load that kayak, find all your scuba gear. You don’t know what might happen.”

I have similar feelings about writing the next book. It too will be a journey. So, just as I prepare for my outdoor adventures, I do the research, I prepare, and then I sit down at my computer and expect the unexpected. In both instances, I tell myself, “Just do it; you’ll be glad you did.”

And so far, I’ve always been proud that I made the effort.