Month: February 2022

When I was 8 years old, I was a really good baseball player. I worked hard to become a hitter and I could catch and field better than most boys in my class. For hours, I threw a rubber ball up against our house and batted it back. I wanted to play Little League like my male classmates. My mom and dad, in their wisdom, did not tell me no but took me to the ballfield to talk to the Little League coach. I marched up to him and declared my intention to play on his team.

The coach smiled and tried to be kind, “Little League is only for boys but someday you can play softball on the high school girls’ team.” That day was my first encounter with a budding feminism and the injustice of gender roles.

I mostly accepted the roles of being female growing up, but I never liked it. Although I enjoyed science, my high school math teacher said girls usually were not good enough in math to do science. Going to college was fine and I had three choices for a career—teacher, secretary, or nurse. I chose teaching, and I do not regret my career. I am proud that later I aced five statistics courses in graduate school and became a social scientist.

I don’t recall knowing how feminism might be helpful to me until I went to college and eventually was exposed to the early popular feminist literature such as The Feminine Mystique (Friedan, 1963). I was committed to the Equal Rights Amendment and wore an ERA bracelet every day until it broke in half (an omen to what would happen in the future).

I was engaged in the Second Feminist Movement of the 1980s (the first era was in the early 1900s focused primarily on women’s suffrage). The second wave was about equality for women in all realms of society. With my colleagues, I wrote one of the first books about women’s leisure: A Leisure of One’s Own: A Feminist Perspective on Women’s Leisure. Our second book connected more with the third wave of feminism emphasizing the different experiences of women and the need for varied approaches: Both Gains and Gaps: Feminist Perspectives on Women’s Leisure. Feminism has nuances that continue to evolve.

Back when I was 8 years old and still today, I believe as Gloria Steinem suggests, a feminist is “anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.” Mary Shelley summed it well when she stated, “I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves.” Feminism has been a dynamic tool that has allowed me to look at the world not as it is, but for its potential for all people and especially little girls who want to play baseball.

My new favorite activity is tracking, especially in the winter. I am learning the fundamentals and joys of tracking animals. I am becoming more proficient as a result of knowing Andy Ames and the Wandering Wildlife Society of Estes Park.

My favorite co-tracker is my friend Deb with whom I frequently hike/snowshoe. We had a particularly enjoyable day earlier this winter going out on a beautiful winter day solely for the purpose of tracking animals and seeing what we could find in the recent snowfall. We saw tracks from deer, elk, moose, squirrels, a bobcat, mice and voles, and snowshoe hares.

I love the snowshoe hares that leave their tracks in the snow. I am not sure if it is many hares or just a few extremely active ones.

These hares live in the boreal forests of Rocky Mountain National Park and are active year-round. Snowshoe hares have a seasonal variation in fur color–they are brown in summer and almost pure white in winter, and harder to see. The shedding of the hare coat and gradual replacement of the guard hairs is triggered twice a year by changes in day-length. They gain their name from their large hind feet lined with stiff hairs that form a snowshoe that supports their weight on the surface of the snow.

Hares have perceptive hearing. Upon detecting a predator, they frequently freeze in their tracks. This stopping, in addition to their camouflage color, is an effective means of avoiding predators and also for avoiding those of us looking for them along the trails.

Along with tracking, finding animal scat (moose poop with its sawdust infusions; coyotes and their sometimes hairy and bony feces) is exciting since it portends that in addition to the track evidence, the animals may be around. However, hares will re-ingest their feces to extract all of the available nutrients from their food– another reason they may be so elusive.

I am learning to identify tracks by their configurations as well as by the habitats that I explore. I imagine myself as a snowshoe hare running through the snow and looking for places to hide under downed trees and snowdrifts and seeking delectable snacks available in the hiding places.

Seeing wildlife as a wander in the park is a treat. Thinking about their lives and where they might be living is challenging. I relish knowing that the animals are there because of their tracks regardless of whether I actually spot them. If I become better at tracking, that will be great. If I never improve, I still love the quest, especially in the winter.

In 2021, the Doomsday Clock moved to 100 seconds until midnight. The Clock is a symbol that represents the likelihood of a human-made global catastrophe. It is maintained by the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and is a metaphor for threats to humanity from unchecked scientific and technical advances. “The Clock represents the hypothetical global catastrophe as midnight and the Bulletin’s opinion on how close the world is to a global catastrophe as a number of minutes to midnight. The factors influencing the Clock are nuclear risk and climate change.”

The 100 seconds is the closest the clock has ever been to midnight. I find it frightening to realize the direction we are going. I remember in the early 1980s it was at 3 minutes because of the nuclear threat. Climate was an issue but not predominate. Both catastrophes are invisible to many people.

In the early 1980s I was involved in anti-nuclear efforts. I remember going to an all-day workshop about anti-nuclear activism. One of the activities was to spend some time with another person and learn all we could about him/her. I don’t remember my paired person’s name, but I do remember the facilitator saying, “Look into your partner’s eyes and think about how you are going to die together in a nuclear war.” I will never forget that experience as we both looked at each other with tears streaming down our faces. I had just met this guy and I didn’t want him to die.

Fortunately, the crises of the Reagan era Cold War were averted, and the clock actually was set up to 17 minutes before midnight during the 1990s. Was that false consciousness? In the past two years it changed dramatically because the climate change crisis has progressed much faster than anticipated. I am concerned. As Greta Thunberg said, “How dare we not respond?”

The Doomsday Clock is controversial, and yet, it makes me wonder what I can and should do about climate change. I try to be positive and hopeful about the future, but climate change is a huge problem. I am environmentally conscious but unwilling to give up my car or quit eating meat. I enjoy the comforts of life. I read an article recently noting that 50 (individual) ways to save the environment is only a band aid approach unless we address bigger upstream policy issues concerning climate change. I like the idea of thinking globally, acting locally but I am not sure how to move forward. I am hopeful that climate change can be reversed, but I worry every day about those 100 seconds.

We have passed the mid-point of winter in Estes Park. Since it seems to last seven months (mid-October until mid-May), we are over the hump. I would not like to live in perpetual winter, but I enjoy the changing seasons and I enjoy what winter offers especially when snow is involved. Yet, winter requires negotiation and an intentional positive mindset.

A park ranger I work with on snowshoe walks reminds people that the difference between summer and winter in the park is that winter is far less forgiving. If you are out and unprepared in the winter, you will face graver circumstances if something goes wrong than if it is summer.

One can take at least two perspectives about winter: Sinclair Lewis noted that “Winter is not a season, it’s an occupation.” Anamika Mishra proposed, “Winter is not a season, it’s a celebration.” Winter does take thoughtful planning to enjoy it. On the farm, chores took longer because of assuring that animals did not have frozen water and that they had enough bedding to keep them comfortable.

On the other hand, knowing how to prepare enables one to enjoy the winter and celebrate the beauty of the landscapes and the resilient animals. I identify with the bird and mammal “tolerators” like coyotes and snowshoe hares who adapt and survive in the winter. I envy the hibernators sometimes, but they also miss the beauty of the circumstances that define winter.

The worst thing about winter in Estes Park is the wind. Before I moved permanently, I met a couple who were returning to Texas after having lived fulltime here for four years. They said they could not tolerate the wind. After my first full winter, I decided not to complain about the wind but embrace it. One can experience trails in the woods that have less wind than other places. In addition, as the saying goes, there is no such thing as harsh weather but bad clothing. Learning to dress for wind with long underwear, neck warmers, wind pants, and puffy jackets modifies the annoyances of wind for me.

I tend to romanticize winter because I had a 29-year reprieve when living in the South. Winter can be unpleasant with prolonged cold and treacherous driving conditions. In Iowa people focused more on the surviving than enjoying winter. Moving to Minnesota and Wisconsin, however, enabled me to redefine winter with activities like X-country ski racing as well as celebrations such as Ice Carnivals. Winter in the South often meant freezing rain rather than snow. But winter was noticeably short, which was the reward for enduring it until the spring flowers emerged in late February.

I like all the seasons and what they bring. I am enjoying new opportunities to celebrate the surprises and opportunities winter has to offer. As John Steinbeck suggested, “What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”