Surviving in Brown County
~ by Mark Blackwell
Back in the last century, when I first landed in Brown County, I was already the recipient of certain arcane knowledge about survival. I garnered some of that knowledge by doing a five-year stint in the Boy Scouts and some of it from growing up in the country.
What one learns from being a Scout is to“ Be Prepared.” And growing up in the country means that stuff happens whether you are prepared or not. Generally, you can’ t just run over to the hardware store when stuff happens. You have to know how to jerry rig things. I discovered there were other things to learn.
First off, I built a cabin out in the woods. Although farms and forests are both located in rural areas, the skill set is a little different. Keep in mind, I started this project back in the dark ages when there were no cell phones, no internet, and no YouTube. Nowadays, you can get an internet connection that depends on the mood of the satellite, current moon phase, and whether or not a ground squirrel has chewed through your cable.
We do have cellphones, but they may or may not work depending on where you are amongst the hills and hollers. If there is a choice between getting a cell phone or a deep freeze, go for the deep freeze.
Why a deep freeze, you ask? Well, even if you have a cell phone with good reception, you still can’ t get a pizza delivered. What you want to do is find a frozen pizza that you can tolerate and stock up. Same goes for canned soups, oatmeal, and anything else that you can heat up on a wood stove because your electricity is going to go out at some point. Where I was living, the power went out two or three times a year— usually not more than two or three days at a time, but generally in the winter.
Another thing you need to do is drive a pickup truck. While I like the idea of a Prius or Corvette, they just ain’ t practical. If you’ re gonna live in Brown County, you need a pickup. First off, a pickup will identify you as somebody who lives here. Secondly, you need to have room to haul your chainsaw, gas can, shovel, sand, spare can of gas( for when you realize you forgot to refill the other one after you used it), tool box, so you can make repairs to the chain saw, gloves, spotlight, and a blanket to warm up in.
When the electricity goes out, it is usually a symptom of a tree or trees going down and taking the power lines down too. That is a symptom of a blizzard, ice storm, torrential rain, tornado, or any combination thereof. If a tree could fall away from a roadway, it won’ t. It will go down across the road taking out as much infrastructure as possible.
Most of the time a tree will go down between wherever you are and wherever you’ re going— usually to your home. It is this fact that prompts one to haul around a chain saw and the rest of the paraphernalia. I have had to cut my way home many times. But the
60 Our Brown County • Sept./ Oct. 2019