Winter - Rick Bass

Winter by Rick Bass  was written in 1991, but the images he shares as he and his girlfriend settle in to the remote Yaak valley are even more poignant in this climate stressed time.  I enjoyed the feelings and experiences and have the added advantage of living in a state forest with a town of 300 as my local equivalent to his experiences.  It is fun to see him as a real inexperienced settler in the deep woods, cutting firewood, snowshoeing, learning.  I went through that in 1971 when we moved to the Audubon Center and tried to figure out all the challenges of a really cold and snowy winter (with two kids too).   

Almost everyone can relate to the impact of short days and long nights - we now have initials to describe the phenomenon, but it is so visceral that it cannot be summarized as a syndrome.  "The days are gradually, by minutes, getting longer, and soon I'll be out of it, going full bore again, put on my city ways and do the work of three men - but these short, dark days are bigger than I am, larger than the chemical stirrings going on in the back of the brain, and I've learned that if I fight it, I'll only be more tired the next day."

Kate and I love winter and the coming of snow.  This year we have too little and it frustrates.  Snow is the essence of a wonderful winter.  In this journal of living in the remote forest I enjoy the simple beauty that he describes when he writes, "I watch individual flakes; I peer up through the snow and see the blank infinity from which it comes; I listen to special silence it creates."

In Minnesota we have not had Caribou in my life time, but I still miss them.  In Canada we found an antler and satisfaction in knowing that a few still roam in the woods.  The potential loss of Moose to MN because of climate and the surrounding factors is a bone-chiling threat and makes me relish the ode to the caribou that comes in one of Rick's soliloquys: "Caribou used to roam the old forests of the northern United States, no just in Montana, but in Minnesota and all the way to Maine. ...I crave wilderness. I want to hoard nature the way that they might hoard sports cars. What I'm saying is that I don't want only gray wolves and grizzlies up here..., but caribou too. 

"There are names on the old maps of this area that break my heart, names like Caribou Creek and Caribou Mountain. The mapmakers didn't give us those names by accident.
"But I missed out on it. There aren't any caribou up on Caribou Mountain now. Just ghosts."

We can say the same in Minnesota where Caribou Falls on the Minnesota shore never gets seen by its namesake. Only a remnant - a small remnant remains on the mainland - Pukaskwa National Park in Ontario and a crow of caribou confined to the Slate Islands. I want them back in the woods to surprise me in my forays in the boreal forests - living ghosts, not just memories.

Rick Bass describes the mental ups and downs of winter extremely well - "See, I don't yet realize that March will be the hardest month.  Early February's the coldest, and often the snowiest, but March, strange, silent March, will be the hardest.

"The danger in yielding to thoughts of spring - green grass, hikes, bare feet, lakes, fly fishing, rivers, and sun, hot sun - is that once these thoughts enter your mind, you can't get them out.

"Love winter.  Don't betray it.  Be loyal.

"When the spring gets here, love it, too - and then the summer.

"But be loyal to winter, all the way through - all the way, and with sincerity - or you'll find yourself high and dry, longing for a spring that's a long way off, and winter will have abandoned you, and in her place you'll have cabin fever, the worst.

"The colder it gets, the more you've got to love it."

The portraits of his fellow hermits are okay, but lack the details I would like to have - however, if he could have filled in the details - they would not be hermits!

It is good to go back and find books that carry a message and of course Rick Bass has gone on to a prominent place as an author.