Wandering and Wondering

It is March Madness. Aristotle suggested that “No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.” That idea applies to people who love basketball this time of the year.

The only real spectator sport I watch other than the Olympics is College Basketball (both men and women). Once upon a time years ago, I played basketball in a world different than today, especially for women.

I look forward to this crazy time of the year and adjust my schedule to binge watch as much as possible. I have favorite teams. I always enjoy a good game, however, no matter who is playing and like to cheer for the underdog. I am glad I do not have an investment in some games as it keeps my heart rate lower.

I wasn’t always a big college basketball fan until I moved to North Carolina and specifically, the Research Triangle of Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Durham. It was almost impossible not to be a basketball fan if you wanted to be conversant with anyone from November through March.

One of the biggest faux paus I ever made was within the first few weeks of moving to North Carolina. Colleagues invited me to an exhibition game the UNC Tarheel Men were playing. We were watching the warm-up and I leaned over casually and said, “Now, who is our coach?” Three people’s eyes grew huge as they looked at me aghast. Finally, one person blinked and said, “It’s Dean Smith.” I had not followed college basketball for years. I NEVER made that mistake again. 

I played basketball all through high school. Rural Iowa was a haven for girls’ basketball throughout much of the 20th century. In my days, it was half court with three forwards and three guards on each side. Iowa girls’ basketball in that day also had a two-dribble limit and you either had to pass or shoot after the dribbles.

As a forward, with only two people scoring, it was not hard to rack up points. I seldom brag, but I hold the all-time scoring record for Coggon High School (61 points in a game). It will always stand since I played for a merged school district, North Linn, my senior year. Further, I was not tall (5’5″), but most teammates were average height. I would have loved to play competitively in college, but I had other career ambitions.

Everybody with any interest in March Madness knows about “brackets.” I used to fill them out religiously, but they usually got BUSTED the first day.

Basketball is a great March diversion as I await the unfolding of spring. I feel a bit of emptiness once the Madness is over. But then, there is always next year… 

March is Women’s History month. Pausing to remember the contributions of women is delightful. I welcome the day, however, when women are part of all written history. Honoring “women firsts” is vital and I hope someday identifying any woman as the first will not be necessary.

Gerda Leaner was one of the first well known historians to write about women history in the early 1970s. She advocated for the inclusion of women in all of history and particularly noted the lack of information about Black women. Further, Lerner promoted not only the need to acknowledge famous women but also to recognize the contributions of ordinary women who labored, often invisibly, to improve family and community life.

One example of the numerous contributions of women that have not always been noted is the new Estes Park Women’s Monument dedicated in September 2021. It depicts images and the lives and brief stories of a dozen women of various backgrounds that were part of the fabric of life in Estes Park during its 100-year history. The center of the plaza is a sculpture of a little girl and Helen Hondius, a central figure in the community who among other endeavors, was instrumental in funding the library.

When I think of women who contributed to everyday history, I think of my mother and all her efforts for our family and as an elementary school teacher and community volunteer. As a small token of her work, I purchased a brick in her honor at the Plaza of Heroines outside of the Carrie Chapman Catt Building at Iowa State University.

Catt was a distinguished alumnus of Iowa State’s class of 1880 and was a leader in the US women’s suffrage movement and a crusader for women’s rights across the world. Marjorie A. Henderson’s brick joins 3900 other women who made an impact on individuals, families, communities, and society. The description I included to describe my mom was: “Mother, Teacher, Community Volunteer.”

I appreciate the stories about women during Women’s History Month. Honoring the accomplishments of women is significant. I look forward to a time when both men and women will be remembered similarly for their important and unique contributions to history.

I regret some things in my early life and want to reconcile as I reflect on my current life. I acted in my early days in a way that I would never contemplate today. I was a bounty hunter and I cannot undo my now regretted sins.

As a child, I learned to fish and hunt on our family farm. I caught fish, and sometimes we ate them. I hunted squirrels and rabbits and killed a couple. Neither one was good to eat, and I really didn’t enjoy shooting a gun. My admission is, however, that I killed dozens of gophers as a farm kid in the 1950s and got paid for those efforts.

Pocket gophers were a nuisance on our farm. They dug mounds to make their tunnels and then badgers went after them and dug even bigger holes to catch them. If gophers were gone, the badgers would not be a problem.

The county where I lived put a bounty on gophers. Turning in pairs of the front feet strung on a wire was worth $.25 a pair. My dad made trapping more lucrative by giving me another $.25 for each pair of feet.

Spring and early summer was the trapping season. Dad taught me how to find the gopher hole by noting the way the dirt mounded and then digging a hole. I hid a small jaw trap at the trail intersection designed to catch the gophers’ front feet. I checked the traps every 24 hours early in the morning. If a gopher was caught, it was usually still alive. I killed it with a concussive blow from my shovel to its head. I cut off the front feet and buried the dead gopher back in the hole.

After three summers of trapping, I extirpated most gophers and moved on to other less violent interests. In graduate school, however, I read Aldo Leopold’s book, A Sand County Almanac. He describes shooting a wolf:

“We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes – something known only to her and to the mountain.”

Leopold never killed a wolf again. I think about the dying light in those gophers’ eyes and know today I could not consciously kill another living mammal.

I am not opposed to ethical hunting when the playing ground is level between humans and animals. Hunting and fishing for food have importance for people.

Today, however, I live my life in reverence for animals of all kinds. I offer grace to the domestic animals that nourish my body. I respect the circle of life in the outdoors. If the ecological balance gets uneven, I believe science can be useful to manage land and animals. For me, however, my killing days are over.

My favorite place to walk when I don’t have the time to go into the park is Lake Estes. I savor the changing skies, water, and wildlife. Every day is different. I am open to serendipitous moments on my lakeside walks.

No matter the weather and dependent on my schedule and inclination, I go to the lake most days. Early in the morning is peaceful. Moonlight walks open up a new world of diminished light and reflections on the water. I cherish the quietness when snow is lightly falling. The environment is everchanging but it’s a perfect scene.

When I was working full time, I often did not notice the world around me. I was outside most days running, since one could do that in North Carolina, but I usually did not discern the changes in my environment on a day-to-day basis.

Living in Colorado and having a lake within walking distance of my house are giving me insights on bioregionalism. Bioregionalism is being consciously aware of the ecology, economy, and culture of the place where one lives. I like living a rooted life, living in place. My almost daily visits to Lake Estes anchor me.

The culture of people I meet at Lake Estes is a combination of regulars as well as visitors. I frequently see one woman walking her young labradoodle who is full of energy. A volunteer from the animal shelter often is there with one or more dogs for me to meet. Runners abound along the pathways. My favorite people are those who comment about the beauty of the lake area. One day I passed a woman who turned around as a flock of geese flew over and enthusiastically pronounced, “I never get tired of this.”

My hope each day is to see the wildlife. Elk and deer are common since part of the path borders the manicured green golf course. More than once I have had to make a detour because of elk on the trail.

The trail goes through a protected bird sanctuary, and I can always count on waterfowl on the lake. The geese live on the lake year around. Other birds are sometimes in migration. I see a pair of bald eagles frequently that call Lake Estes home.

This winter a rare event occurred at Lake Estes. In early January, three trumpeter swans flew in. They were blown off their migration path. People were excited to see them and hurried to the lake to take photos. Several weeks later they are still at the lake.

I don’t blame those swans for staying. Although I have been living around Lake Estes for almost eight years, I have no desire to leave. The swans and I both appreciate bioregionalism. Every day roots me more deeply in this place.

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.”

The day was a usual fall Saturday morning on my way to volunteer at Bear Lake. I usually leave home early and stop at Sprague Lake to decompress before the day with visitors, and to check out trail conditions. I go in my volunteer uniform but am not “officially” on duty until I reach Bear Lake.

The temperature was cool that October morning with a bit of snow here and there. The lake was quiet with a skim of ice and hardly a breeze. The trail was a bit icy but easily navigable. As I was walking along the board walk on the west side, I lingered a moment to look northwestward for moose who were sometimes in the nearby willows. I paused to admire the rays of the sun that were about to crest the eastern hillside.

A young man ambled by and stopped ten feet from me. We nodded to one another. After a short silence, the 20-something dressed in an unzipped parka and a blue stocking cap resting on his blond head said, “It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“I saw a moose when I was out here yesterday morning,” he remarked.

“Wow, that’s great,” I replied. “I don’t see any signs this morning although it isn’t uncommon for them to be here.”

“I love this place.”

I waited a moment and then asked. “Where is home for you?”

“I’m from Atlanta. This is my first time in Rocky Mountain National Park. I flew to Denver four days ago and immediately came up here. I’m going back this evening.”

“You picked a great time to visit,” I responded.

“I needed this. It has been a tough time for me with COVID and work and everything. Coming here is the best thing I’ve ever done. It has restored my soul.” He paused and continued, “Do you live here?”

“Yes.”

“Do you ever get tired of it?”

I smiled, “No I don’t. Every day, every season is different. I don’t take this beauty for granted.”

“You are so lucky.”

We stood in silence for a moment and then I added, “I better get on with my day. It was nice to visit with you. Keep enjoying the park. Safe travels home.”

He smiled, “Thank you,” and I turned to continue my walk around the lake. I reminded myself of how nature heals consistently, and I can never take this place for granted. The best thing about meeting people in the park is that they show me continually how special these mountains are and how renewed I am to enjoy their nature every day.

People talk about returning to “normal” after the pandemic. The idea of a “new normal” is touted. These conversations have intrigued me to wonder what is meant by normal and whether or not normal is a useful idea.

This discussion may be moot as I am not sure what normal ever was nor if the good old days were better than now. Normal is a perception that may not exist. Normal may now mean that NOTHING is normal. As Davie Hollis noted, “In the rush to return to normal, use this time to consider what parts of normal are worth rushing back to.”  This reflection may be the challenge to our individual and collective futures.

COVID-19 has changed our lives drastically. People write about the disruption as well as the new opportunities. I think about what normal means if equated with the usual, average, or typical condition. Was that state so great? It is important relative to conditions of stability and consistency, and yet, change has been occurring so dramatically for years that I wonder if there is a usual order that we can or even want to count on. Normality may be a comfortable path but may not be interesting.

I have never felt like I was normal. I don’t mind being a bit quirky and am attracted to people who have similar dispositions. I feel that being atypical is not dreadful, but just who I am. I like it. People who want to be normal may lack imagination or courage.

Normal can be conflated with routine and I rejoice in the lack of routine that makes up my life. I like days that are predictable, but I also like days when I do not know what might happen and am open to adventure when it calls. Normal days are best when filled with gifts and opportunities. Something that is wonderfully surprising on a normal day is welcomed.

I do not know what the future holds. I do not expect that normal will exist again if it ever did. I don’t want to return to normal. I hope that abnormal with its connotations of anomalous and aberrant behavior does not become my normal. Yet, I resist defining an ordinary life for myself. I subscribe to what Val Kilmer observed, “There is no normal life. There’s just life. You live it.”