An ice storm may have turned back the clock a century, but Mainers are Mainers no matter what.

I hope this column finds all of you back to normal after the great ice storm of 2008. I was in Chicago and didn't make it back until just after noon on Friday.

Driving home to Cumberland, I was surprised to find that my bank and dry cleaner in Falmouth were both closed. It began to dawn on me that things might not be right.

Finally at our now-darkened home, I was relatively unconcerned, because even in the great ice storm of 1998 we had only lost power for three hours.

Sally and I got out the flashlights and candles, stoked up the fires and prepared to settle in for a quiet evening.

In fact, it was quite romantic. We gathered around the center island in the kitchen, opened a bottle of red wine, lit a few candles, and had a rousingly close game of rummy 500 waiting for the electric power to return at any moment.

Our bubble was deflated when neighbors stopped by to say that they had heard on the radio that more than 200,000 people in southern Maine were without power and that we should plan on being without power for two days at least.

Our subsequent candle-lit dinner lost just a little of its romance as we contemplated how to weather the night without power.

Should we be concerned about the pipes freezing? How was the wood supply holding up? Where was the splitter? Why hadn't we put in the generator we had discussed putting in a year ago when our new home was being built?

We didn't linger long over our hearty soup as, by this time, my wife and I both had a list of things to get done before we could turn in for the night. By 9 p.m. or so we had done what could be done and decided it was time for bed.

It was a beautiful evening with a brilliant full moon and the wind moaning through the trees. Both of us were struck by the quiet. It was a quiet that magnified any sound, the crackling of the fire, the sighing of the trees.

We bundled up and snuggled in for the night.

Of course, like many of you, we didn't snuggle in that long before one of us was up to stoke the fires and keep them going – and so on until, at last, we saw a faint glow of light in the east.

Much to our relief, the house had stayed warm enough that no pipes had frozen – all seemed to be in order. Nonetheless, the morning paper confirmed our fear that we could be without power for a while yet. We were now confident that we could handle the day, but we were not sure our pipes would survive a night in which single-digit lows were forecast.

What to do? We called a neighbor. They too had survived the night OK but had the same worries we did.

We both kicked ourselves for not getting backup generators in the first place. They seemed expensive at that time, but it is amazing how good their value looked now.

We discussed whether we could drain the water from certain exposed parts of our houses. In the end, we both agreed we would simply gut it out for another night.

I then drove over to another neighbor's to check on them. I found them with their daughter and son-in-law, cozy around a wood stove drinking coffee and chatting.

They were in much the same boat. The son-in-law had a portable kerosene heater that he offered to share around in two-hour increments to get us all through the night.

By this time it seemed to me our small community was proving much more resilient than I had imagined.

The clock may have been turned back a hundred years on us, but we hadn't totally lost the coping skills of our forefathers.

Just as I was leaving their house with this newfound sense of pioneer spirit, the power came back on.

On balance, I will take the electricity, and I feel most grateful for the tireless crews from Central Maine Power and other places. We also feel a little closer to our neighbors.

All in all, we were fortunate, more fortunate than many. It has turned out to be a memorable way to start the holiday season.