Monday, 15 January 18

What Writers Can Learn from Northwest Minnesota Winter Animals

Cold enough for ya? Yup. One week from my last post, we in Northwestern Minnesota still exist in the dead of winter. Last Friday morning, the temperature dropped to -35 without wind chill. Since my last post, we did get one blissful day above 30 degrees. Okay. Okay. I know as a northern Minnesotan I shouldn’t be complaining, especially not two posts in a row. Someone, whose name I don’t recall (Could it have been Garrison Keillor?), said many years ago about Minnesotans, “Winter; it’s who we are.” If that statement about our heartiness is true, it should be doubly true for writers, who have no other reason than their own disposition to live in Northwest Minnesota.

https://imgur.com/upRCTa6

After all, winter is made for writers, huddled up under blankets with our laptops metaphorically whirring away on our desks or thighs. Or if you are a writer like me, you may delight in the old art of taking pen or pencil to pages and pages of real paper. Poetry, especially seems to lend itself to this method of creation. How intimate the experience of pulling out those pages and reading them to a group, faces flickered with firelight shadows. In addition, we are fortunate to live surrounded by fellow critters who survive, and even thrive, in the coldest of seasons. The list of our fellow denizens is long: otter, mink, weasel, muskrat, raccoon, mink, skunk, fisher, pine marten, and woodchuck. On the larger end of the spectrum, we have bobcat, fox, timber/gray wolf, coyote, bear, deer, elk, and still, on the rarest of occasions, moose. The plethora of birds, fish, and reptiles would stress the length of this paragraph. The point is, let’s choose a few representative creatures, who stay awake all winter, and see what they have to teach us.

What other critters, other than ourselves, survive, and sometimes thrive, in the long season of ice and snow? When you see a deer testing your nerves on the highway, or a rabbit crossing your path seeming to play chicken, or even the exceptional sighting of the splendid gray wolf, have you stopped and mentally asked how our fellow critters make do in winter. This is not meant to be an all-inclusive nor compressive study, but rather an informal survey of a few of the animals and one bird who live side by side with us, and whose presence we are sometimes graced with, and whose lessons are informative to writers and others.

Let’s start with those beautiful, but hazardous, deer. They have to move much less than in warmer seasons to save on calories, at just the time when food is most scarce, and their metabolism does slow down quite a bit. They even have a coat of underfur that is many times denser than their outer coat. Finally, anyone who has spent time in the woods in winter will likely have seen bedding areas under the conifers where deer weather the buffeting winter winds. In case you were wondering, the survival rate for deer in winter is higher than might be expected, not counting encounters with our vehicles.

And the lessons for writers? Be aware of the slowing of the season, and take advantage of it. Take it down a notch, and let the imagination roam in the space that requires less motion. Both the deer’s dense coat and conifer-shaded beds serve as metaphors for writers to keep a thick skin and protection from the elements of critics of our work. As far as the encounters with vehicles, the lesson deer have for us here is to beware of becoming mesmerized by the bright light of our own work. There may be a V8 pick-up of another critic behind those headlamps. Know when it’s time to run to a new work, or back to one unfinished.

Moving to the other end of the size range, we come to the rabbit who drives gardeners and groundskeepers crazy with their cottontails bouncing from tree to shrub, and even to some perennials to eek out their skinny winter diet. Of course, bunnies have very nice coats, and even thick fur pads on their feet. Perhaps their greatest adaptation is those underground burrows they build where the temperature fluctuates much less than above.

For the writer, the rabbit teaches adaptability, and the capacity to survive on meager pickings, even if they are on someone else’s property, such as taking inspiration from other writers’ work. Those furry feet easily represent the need to change with the seasons of writing, to try a new form, and to cushion one’s steps in the writing process. As for those underground burrows, they are much like the creative void entered by many writers – dark and sometimes claustrophobic, but worth the subterranean journey into the subconscious where much creativity can be ferreted out.

Then there are the ever-present, non-migrating ravens, who of all our fellow creatures, appear to enjoy winter most of all. Northwestern Minnesota is comparatively tropical for them compared to their other territory ranges in Alaska, Greenland, and the Himalayas. The intense black feathers are a means of bringing heat to the raven’s body. Food is hardly problematic for the ravens; they steal and store it where they can, and they dine on small birds and mammals, as well as insects, berries and even worms when they are available. Farther north, ravens are known to tag along with polar bears and scavenge what’s left behind. Such a symbiosis also exists between ravens and wolves. Like wolves, the ravens mating season is in winter, but later. During this time, they are famous for some of their most thrilling aerobatics.

The parallels to the writer’s life should be obvious. Extend the range and territory of both genre and technical prowess. When practical, steal the nourishment needed (i.e., inspiration again) from other writers. Even scavenge from the great and famous polar-bear-and-wolf writers. During the cold months of winter, mating is hardly a bad idea; it may even inspire a writer to perform some creative aerobatics to thrill readers.

No survey of our winter denizens would be complete without turning to the magnificent gray wolves who are quite at home in winter latitudes. In their pack formation, wolves can take down animals much greater in size than themselves, such as the elk herds that are starting to flourish in our area. Deer are, of course, a favorite menu item. Canus Lupis, or gray wolf, sometimes called timber wolf is the largest existing wolf on the planet with males reaching upwards to 100 pounds, and females around 80 pounds.

Here, the wolf teaches writers to find their pack, their “peeps,” in recent parlance. Run around with them a lot and work together to overcome the intimidation of greater writers. And when your writers’ ideas are somewhat frozen, keep them alive with the warmth of fellow writers who, like you, are looking to survive and thrive in the depth of the cold.

Now, we come to Minnesota’s largest wild animal: the moose. Impressively larger than the gray wolf the moose weighs an average of just around 1000 pounds, with antlers alone weighing about forty pounds. In the 1980s, the thriving population in our corner of the state was estimated at 4000 animals; however, a much more recent count, discovered below 100 animals. Optimistically, some believe that the moose have migrated to more favorable habitats. Others, say climate change and/or predation were the problem.

Here the lesson is “size does matter.” No matter how successful, a writing career is always at risk of predation by unscrupulous folks in the world of writing, and the climate change of fickle readers. I have to add, that just a few days ago, I was privileged to witness a pair of moose hightailing it through the Forest just outside our windows. One can survive with determination and ambition.

And what about us? Essentially, we humans are meant to live in a climate like San Diego, or perhaps even the tropics. The range of body core temperatures we can function in is very narrow. But we know that our species has lived, and sometimes thrived in all manner of climates and territories, and we have done so for thousands of years. Humans a thousand years ago or more hibernated with their animals. Some peoples increased their total sleep time. Tribes, like the Sioux, survived the hostile winters of the Dakotas by storing food. In modern times, a startling fact is that most people live out their lives without leaving the normal temperature zone by more a few degrees either way. Another fact about the cold that is seldom recognized is that when you get cold, you want to pee. There’s a physiological explanation of this that we won’t go into here. And I’m not sure what the parallel to writers may be, except when we are in an environment that is too cold for our work, well . . . you get the idea.

And the other parallels to writers? Frankly, we, too, are generally comfortable within a narrow range of the temperatures of our critics. Still, historically, we have adapted, and even slept long hours with beasties; likewise the writer, in the interest of art, may have to “go to bed” with less than savory personalities that include other writers and publishers. The startling fact about writers is that they, too, are loathe to step out of their comfort zone. But as Willy Loman is told in Death of a Salesman, “The jungle is dark but full of diamonds, Willy. But one must go in to fetch a diamond out.”

So, dear writers put on the winter coat of your style, no matter what fashion indicates, add insulating layers to protect from critical assaults, winter gloves to protect those precious hands, and Antarctic boots to allow walking the creative terrain. As for the winter season itself, it closely parallels the environment of a writer’s life. We are not in it just for the sunshine of acknowledged work, or the spring of royalties, plus we know that inevitably there will be a decline in our metabolic rate of new creative work. Still, after that, comes another spring and summer, and if we nurture them, memories of lovely evenings by the fire, and the beauty of new-fallen snow in the Forest.

Jack Pine Savage

From Writers Who Thrived in the Coldest of Seasons

Winter

Brave Winter and I shall ever agree,

Though a stern and frowning gaffer is he.

I like to hear him, with hail and rain,

Come tapping against the window pane;

I joy to see him come marching forth

Begirt with the icicle gems of the north;

But I like him best when he comes bedight

In his velvet robes of stainless white.

A cheer for the snow—the drifting snow!

Smoother and purer than beauty’s brow!

The creature of thought scarce likes to tread

On the delicate carpet so richly spread.

With feathery wreaths the forest is bound,

And the hills are with glittering diadems crown’d;

’Tis the fairest scene we can have below.

Sing, welcome, then, to the drifting snow!

                                                                        Eliza Cook, 1818 – 1889

January

Again I reply to the triple winds

running chromatic fifths of derision

outside my window:

                                  Play louder.

You will not succeed. I am

bound more to my sentences

the more you batter at me

to follow you.

                                  And the wind,

as before, fingers perfectly

its derisive music.

                                                                        William Carlos Williams, 1883 - 1963

To Winter

O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors:

The north is thine; there hast thou built thy dark

Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs

Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car.

He hears me not, but o’er the yawning deep

Rides heavy; his storms are unchain’d, sheathed

In ribbed steel; I dare not lift mine eyes;

For he hath rear’d his scepter o’er the world.

Lo! now the direful monster, whose skin clings

To his strong bones, strides o’er the groaning rocks:

He withers all in silence, and in his hand

Unclothes the earth, and freezes up frail life.

He takes his seat upon the cliffs, the mariner

Cries in vain. Poor little wretch! that deal’st

With storms; till heaven smiles, and the monster

Is driven yelling to his caves beneath Mount Hecla.

                                                                        William Blake, 1757 - 1827

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

                                                                        Robert Frost, 1879 - January 29, 1963