“This old world so strange, you know she’s changing.” – Steve Gibbons

It’s a strange world we live in, especially in the developed world, where things like reliable availability of electricity are expected. If the lights go out, we humans react in various ways.

For some of us, we may not have noticed the lights went out, or much of anything else, if we still have cellphone signal and a charged battery in our phones. At the other end of the technology spectrum are those who may seem hapless – able to light a candle but who are then sitting silently asking themselves: “Now what?”

I guess I would put myself somewhere in the middle of that continuum. The power is out now and has been for almost 12 hours, thanks to a two-day May snowstorm that came right out of February.

I’m like some kind of high-tech caveman sitting by a crackling fire typing this column. I don’t know if I’ll finish or not. It will depend on the amount of time in takes versus my dwindling laptop power supply.

It’s like a 21st century version of “Quest for Fire.”

It’s kind of a weird thing thinking about where electric power comes from.

My earliest memories of understanding on this subject come from being a kid. As I recall, we had an electric waffle iron with a power cord on it that seemed like it was a half-inch thick.

The cord ran to a wall socket that as little kids we had always been told to stay away from, and please do not stick a fork into it. I know a lot of kids probably never thought of putting a fork into an electric wall socket until our parents gave us that idea.

In those days, us kids probably never had much of a real need to think about electricity. We didn’t understand it or anything at all about how it worked.

Most of our toys, if they needed electricity, got their power from batteries. I don’t think we ever really considered there to be any connection whatsoever between the holes in the wall socket and those big “D” and “C” cell batteries.

Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, G.I. Joe action figures, Play-Doh, Slinky, Silly Puddy, jigsaw puzzles, Duncan yo-yos and board games like Mouse Trap, Candy Land, and Hi Ho Cherry-O never needed any electricity at all.

Back then, electricity was for toys on another level. My sister had an Easy-Bake Oven that had to be plugged in so she could bake small cakes and other goodies over an electric light bulb.

We had a Lite-Brite board with the colored pegs that were pushed through dark construction-type paper and numerous holes in a plastic plate. When the display was plugged into the wall, the design you had made in colored pegs was lit up from behind by a light bulb.

Some toy race cars and trains ran on electricity, as did the buzzer and the light on the patient’s nose in the game Operation. In that game, kids were the surgeons trying to remove little parts of a cartoon patient’s body on the game board with a tweezer.

If the tweezer touched the sides of the holes in the body, the buzzer would go off and the patient’s nose would light up. You have botched the operation.

Even though the names of the “organs” you were supposed to remove from the “body,” were things like “broken heart,” “bread-basket” and “spare rib,” it makes me wonder what kind of ghoul came up with this idea.

The other way electricity affected us kids was through the television set, though we never would have really put that together back then. We thought you pushed the button, and the set came on.

In my early days, we didn’t have a color television. When we got one, it was just about the most incredible thing we ever could have imagined. Even when we got the color television, not all shows were broadcast in color.

But some of my favorites were, including Batman and cartoons like The Flintstones, Jonny Quest and all those Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning characters.

Outside the house, we had no need for electricity.

But that didn’t mean we were without fun. We not only played games like football, baseball and basketball, back then, every kid knew how to make up games to play, whether they were with other kids or by yourself.

You used your imagination.

It produced conversations with parents like:

“What are you doing out there?”

“I’m just seeing how many times I can throw a snowball and hit the clothes pole.”

“Oh, OK.”

“Dinner will be ready in a little bit.”

These days, it takes a power outage for me to realize just how dependent I am on so many things run by electricity. I have a cellphone, laptop, television, lights, electric guitar, clocks, internet, furnace, refrigerator and on and on.

It’s times like these when the power is out that I think that I really need to get a generator. But then, when the electricity magically kicks back on at some point, I become an amnesiac and forget all about a generator – so very American of me.

I am really hoping the power will kick back on soon. It’s Tuesday and I don’t want to have to think about missing my History channel favorites “The Curse of Oak Island” and “The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch.”

That’s one of those things that has never left me from my kid days. I still have my favorite television shows that I love to watch and don’t ever want to miss.

The big spring storm that produced the power outage has itself produced some uncommon circumstances.

For starters, there aren’t many schools in this area that have snow days in May.

The first day of the blow, which dumped about 20 inches of snow over the two days at our house, I heard the first common loon back from migration singing from the lake. I haven’t heard him since. He may have decided to fly back to the Gulf Coast.

Standing outside, I can hear all kinds of spring birds singing in what appears to be the dead of winter. It is a very striking experience.

The newest arrivals today have been the white-throated sparrows, who are singing their distinctive Northwoods serenade “Old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody.”

Dark-eyed juncos, robins and even a veery, took refuge against the south side of the house, where the overhanging roof left a cement ledge free from snow and afforded the birds protection against much of the roaring wind.

For us humans, this storm was a cruel April fool’s joke held over from a month gone by. For the birds and animals, these conditions make surviving with diminished access to food more challenging.

Three weeks ago, the deer were already dragging through the last days of winter waiting for green grass.

A pregnant doe and a yearling were dinner guests at our bird feeders last night. It was markedly ironic to see the deer standing less than 10 feet away from us outside in the cold beyond the window glass while we sat at the dining room table eating venison minestrone.

The storm claimed our last two remaining apple trees in our backyard. These were old trees that still produced dozens of delicious apples that we shared with the deer. It really hurt to see those trees splintered and broken, lying under the weight of heavy, wet snow on the ground.

There had been a third apple tree back there in the yard, but a summer storm claimed that one about a year ago. That same storm had cleaved off big branches of the two trees that toppled yesterday.

The deer didn’t mind the trees being down. They nibbled at the branches, as they did a section of cedar tree the wind blew down in the front of the house.

I took a couple treks out to the bird feeders yesterday and today to fill seed and suet feeders and to brush snow away from the feeder openings so the birds could eat.

Another irony that just washed over me is looking outside at all the white, wind and cold, it seems impossible to think warmer temperatures later in the week will make all this winter weirdness disappear faster than it came.

I imagine it will burst like some fever dream into the warmth and wonder of what mid-May springtime usually looks like here.

I’ve described this winter as being the last throes of death on several occasions, but it keeps coming back. I recall driving through Wyoming in June on a cross-country trip when a snowstorm had hit, and snow was piled along the shoulders of the interstate.

With the calendar clicking right along, it seems as though we may be losing out on a good portion of our springtime as these unusually late snows continue.

I recall that after one very cold winter there were still chunks of ice floating in Lake Superior during the first couple days of June.

The temperature was about 75 degrees and people were sunbathing on the beach.

So weird.

Outdoors North is a weekly column produced by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources on a wide range of topics important to those who enjoy and appreciate Michigan’s world-class natural resources of the Upper Peninsula.