(written from my office, where the lights are still on)

Trying to go home was a mistake. The house itself was still undamaged, but the devastation around it terrified me. My three huge trees had held up reasonably well until the last burst of freezing rain, the one that caught me in the city. But now, a huge branch lay across the driveway and the yard was full of shattered wood.

And I didn't know where the kids were. I knew friends had come to get them when the power went out and I was stranded, unable to get home. But then I couldn't get hold of the friends. They could be in one of two different places, and the phone lines were down to both. I hadn't seen the kids in 24 hours, and I couldn't get the worry to stop; it felt like a hamster on a wheel, compulsive, exhausting, unending.

I minced and skidded my way to the front steps, got the door open, and freaked: the house was cold, dark, empty, remote, full of the sound of crying branches. Everything was as I'd left it Wednesday, and everything was wrong. This wasn't my nest; this was a war zone. I grabbed bags and stuffed clothing into them, muttering to myself. Quite irrationally, I went down cellar and grabbed four bottles of the good new red wine I'd made before Christmas --like grabbing Great-Aunt's photo off the mantlepiece when the house has been bombed.

The kids were at the second place I tried, very glad to see me, as I was glad to see them. We fought our way into the city, driving slowly, in convoy. The roads aren't too bad. Mostly, it's the trees, and the power lines.

What has fallen for four endless days now is pure rain at slightly under freezing temperatures, and it has laid a half-inch veneer of glaze ice over all of eastern Ontario and western Quebec. We've had some pellet ice and snow as well, but it's the glaze ice that's done the damage. The ice is astonishingly heavy; I found that when I tried to open my car trunk, and the hood weighed a good ten or fifteen pounds more than usual. The ice pulls down the power lines from its sheer weight, and they snap or topple the poles and pylons with them.

The huge pylons that light and warm Montreal are toppled like tinkertoys, and three million people in the city are cold, dark, and probably getting hungry. Sixty thousand are without power in Eastern Ontario; there is not a light between Ottawa and the St. Lawrence River. They've declared a state of emergency; the military has been called out. Thus far not many have died, thank God. But it's rough on the very old and the very young. They're trying to get people into shelters. And dear God help the dairy farmers and their suffering stock...

What's hard to describe is the beauty, which is simply astonishing. I saw yesterday a cedar bough bent gracefully under its burden of glaze ice and pellet ice, and it was sheer Zen elegance. Where there are lights, the trees are lace-like, fantastically intricate, gently glowing, luminous and lovely--and then with a crack like a gunshot, or the deep boom of artillery, something will snap under the weight of beauty, and another living thing will be wounded, maybe to death. A neighbour's huge old willow simply exploded like a bomb; it's all over her backyard, in pieces, and all that's left is a five-foot stump.

I'd been feeling very sorry for myself and my house and (above all) my beautiful beloved maples--I've looked at that front tree for eleven years, through thick and thin, and it may never be the same again, may not even survive, may have to be cut down. I love that tree and I fear for it. I hate being away from home. My kids are with their father, and I am without roots or routine, and I hate that too.

But then I watched the news: the dairy farmers may lose everything. If the cows aren't milked, they'll dry up. TV last night showed a Christmas tree farmer standing in his devastated field, saying "It's all gone. All of it. I did my crying last night." And I thought of the orchards--this is a great area for apples --and the sugarbushes. All that careful work lost; whole farms will be wiped out. I thought of the birds and wild beasts, who will die in their thousands. I thought of the families trying to figure out how to eat when they can't cook, especially the poor. There's not much ready-cooked that they can afford.

I thought of those who are fighting for the rest of us. The hydro workers have been putting in 18-hour days, trying to repair downed lines and clear fallen trees and branches. It's physically exhausting work, laboriously knocking ice off lines and transformers, sawing up and hauling off branches and trees, and it's miserably cold and damp out there. Thank God, relief workers are coming in from electric utilities in the U.S., hundreds of cherrypickers on their way (thank you! thank you!) And they've called out the military. But still, the sheer endlessness of it, and the discouragement, must be daunting. You fix a line and a block gets its power back, and two minutes later there's a CRACK down the street and there goes the line again. All you can do is swear and try again.

I can set aside my own worries and sense of uprootedness because I am warm and safe and fed, and so are my children. All I can do now is to pray: that the weather ends, that the devastation is less bad than it looks right now, that the trees' suffering ends soon--they sound human and hurting as they groan and break. This is a city of trees, and it hurts the soul to look at them.

I suppose there's the Obligatory Theological Uplift: It really does help to get your nose out of your own navel and look around; others are suffering more--almost always, others are suffering more!--and remembering that, and sinking your own troubles into caring about them, is the best way of coping with your own anxiety. Very true. I've found that out yet again.

But mostly: all you can do sometimes is pray. That's where we are now, in this corner of the world. Please pray for us in eastern Ontario and western Quebec, especially for the great suffering city of Montreal. Pray also for New England, which has been hit hard in places, and pray that the storm does less harm in the Maritimes, which is where it's headed now.

Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.