I Didn’t Know We Were Prepping

I grew up in a small town in Minnesota where nobody seemed to have their own name until they were an adult- and until that time, you were “John Olsen’s boy,” or “Jean Brown’s eldest daughter.”  With the older generation, you were “Gertrude Johnson’s grandchild,” even when you were an adult.  It was a very tightly-knit community.  It had to be, because the winters were filled with blizzards and heavy snows, spring held floods, summers had scorching heat and humidity, and fall brought wicked storms and combinations of brutal heat and sudden frosts.  Tornado season started when the snows melted, and forest fires were a possibility when the temperature went above seventy degrees.  The weather was the one thing people talked about nonstop, because the weather ruled our lives.  After any bad weather, winter or summer, you immediately checked on the rest of ‘your’ (extended) people and made sure they were okay.  Sometimes you ended up digging other people out of the snow, or helping to pick up the shambles left behind by a tornado.

I didn’t know we were prepping; it was a fact of life that you could lose electricity any time of the year from a storm and so we prepared for the eventuality.  To make things even more challenging, jobs were often seasonal and many people juggled as many jobs as they could, to make ends meet.  There were many times when we tapped into our food and fuel reserves.  Our extended family hunted, fished and raised pigs and cows, so we always had meat in the freezer.  Our main source of heat for the home was a wood stove and my brother and I learned early on how to cut, haul, split and stack wood- as well as how to start (and keep) a fire as quickly as possible.

As an adult, my life has taken me far from that lifestyle.  I’ve lived in many types of cities, met many different types of people and worked many different types of jobs.  I’ve learned to lock my doors, to avoid individuals that don’t strike me as safe, and I’ve learned that the tight-knit community I grew up in is quickly fading beneath a growing generation of people.  Much of what I once knew has faded, like a second language that is no longer spoken.

Like so many others, 9/11 will be forever etched into my mind.  I don’t know if that was the catalyst for our return to prepping; I believe that being stationed in Maryland was the impetus.  Maryland was lovely, but at the slightest hint of inclement weather- rain, snow, frost or fog – people would flock to the stores and raid the shelves as though they were never going to see a supermarket again.  It became a source of frustration to not be able to get toilet paper because the forecast called for rain or snow.  I started to stock up a bit more, and I have been pleasantly surprised to find my “second language” of weather-prepping coming back to me.  I have also been pleased to find another tight-knit community; one that is online and more than willing to share knowledge, tips and stories of how and of why.  Stories draw communities together:  they teach lessons, they remind us of our roots and they remind us of the common bonds we have that are most important.  The reason for prepping is a touchstone for us all: food, water, shelter, safety, security, comfort.  It all comes full circle, doesn’t it?

T.S. CO

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