Freezer Fail Fallout

Loss and renewal and meals unrealized

The last part of my 1200-mile drive home from Montana was brutal. Night had fallen, and all the way from about Steele, North Dakota to St. Paul, a raging, howling, angry rainstorm attacked me. I finally stumbled into my kitchen around 2:30 a.m. and immediately noticed something. Or rather the lack of something: The fridge wasn’t humming.

I opened it and a slug of warm air fell into the room. Shit. I opened the freezer. Mostly cold, but the top shelf was above 50 degrees. Oh my God. For how long? I’d been gone 10 days.

Exhausted, I fell into bed for a few hours to sleep, waking at dawn with my heart hammering. I sifted through the freezer and quickly realized more than half of its contents were above even refrigerator temperatures. Again, for how long? I started tossing anything I couldn’t be certain was still safe to eat.

Lake trout from Lake Superior. Walleye from North Dakota. Venison from Oklahoma. Grouse from Northern Minnesota. Pesto from my garden. Most of this completely irreplaceable.

A gut punch. It felt like a breakup. I wanted to throw up as I called an appliance repair company to see what could be done.

Meanwhile, I gathered the few things that remained cold and decided to refreeze them in my chest freezer. This isn’t an ideal situation, but it’s better than losing everything.

So many memories lost. I had plans. Hopes to create wonderful new things with these treasures tucked away. There was a piece of smoked fish I’d bought in Duluth I’d been saving for a special guest. Gone. The grouse I’d planned for a knoephla soup. A pheasant I’d wanted to serve with wild rice.

I moped around a bit, waiting for the repairman. This was not at all what I’d wanted, and after the rainstorm and the long trip I was feeling wrung out. As I sat there on my couch stewing, the sun peeked out. A sunbeam shone on my carpet, beckoning. I laid down in it like a cat, soaking up the solar power.

And I started to feel better.

Yes, I’d lost some things I cared about. My plans for future meals thwarted. But this sort of loss allows a person time to think about new priorities, about resetting and fresh starts. The repairman soon found out what was the problem: The freezer door had been ajar and a buildup of ice had formed, like a plaque, around the fan and coils — the heart of the freezer. And it had just stopped working. There was residual cold there to keep things going for a bit, but without a reset, it would have soon failed even at that.

The loss gives me the opportunity to be more intentional about what I put into my freezer. Maybe I add fewer things to it, but those things will matter more. Turns out the likely reason for the failure was just… too much. The freezer was overfilled, and that likely broke the seal.

I’m going to view this as a chance to live more sustainably, more in the moment and less about planning for things a month, six months, maybe even two years down the road. I’ve done that sort of heavy planning before, and it can create a web of expectations for that “perfect” meal in my head that are, frankly, almost impossible to live up to when the time actually comes. If it ever comes at all.

A full freezer can be calming, but it can also weigh on you. You feel responsible for making something wondrous with that partridge, rather than just living with ease and flow, plucking something out and cooking it in whatever way feels good at the moment.

Make no mistake: I’ll still squirrel away some ducks, deer, mushrooms and yes, probably squirrel for the future. After all, I am a planner, and I live in a cold climate where you must store things for winter. But I am going to try to do less planning and more living.

So, in a weird way, that failed freezer was a kindness. One I never expected.