Bears hibernate for as long as seven months. I’ve been hibernating for close to twelve. As much as I look forward to emerging from my den (I have an appointment for my first vaccine tomorrow), I also wonder how long it will take to feel “normal” again, if ever. Will this pandemic have changed the world so much, as did 9/11, that we will never go back to pre-Covid-19 life? I looked to the wildlife experts for some information on how the Ursidae handle their seclusion and reawakening to see if I could draw any parallels that might help me cope.
Before they retire for the winter bears pound on the pounds. They can consume as many as 20,000 calories (1) per day to store enough fat for them to survive without food, even though their metabolism drops dramatically. My metabolism has dropped dramatically, not only every year since I turned fifty, but every day of the pandemic since my activity level has virtually ground to a halt (I won’t go to the gym). I have that in common with the bears. The difference is that my ursine friends carb load before they hibernate, and then don’t eat. I have probably eaten that same number of calories daily during my hibernation – what else is there to do, and eating helps alleviate stress, doesn’t it? I seem to have gotten this bit of natural sheltering in place bass ackwards.
The combination of fascination with the rituals of ursine hibernation and my own anxiety over post-pandemic life led me to investigate what they do when they emerge. The word that Steph Yin New York Times (2) used to describe the state in which the bears hover, torpor, resonated deeply with me. She explains that hibernation may not actually be as restful as one might think a whole winter of sleep would be: “By the time they emerge, animals are often sleep-deprived: most expend huge bursts of energy to arouse themselves in the winter so they’re body temperatures don’t dip too low.” “This back and forth,” she says, “is exhausting.” I feel like Ms. Yin could have just as well been describing the quaintly-coined term “pandemic fatigue,” that itself describes a very real and very deep torpor. The OED defines torpor as “the state of not being active and having no energy or enthusiasm.” This differs from simple sloth, which is defined as laziness. I’m not so much lazy as paralyzed. Even though I have had less to do in every way, I feel sluggish and unmotivated. I look longingly out my window wondering when it might be safe to emerge – physically yes, but mentally and emotionally as well.
She notes that “But just because it’s spring it doesn’t mean it’s time to celebrate.” Exactly! I am happy about the warm weather, the longer days, and the promise of seeing people. In person. Not on a screen. But I’m nervous, too. Will the vaccine really work? Will the new variants raise themselves, wraith-like to quash the vaccines’ efficacy? Will I even remember how to have a conversation with a person or persons in person? “Black bears emerge from their dens in April, but stay lethargic for weeks…they sleep plenty and don’t roam very far.” I know I will throw out (or ritually burn – they have a faint scent of gasoline) all the fleece lined leggings I’ve lived in for months. I suspect that I, too, will stay in this state of “walking hibernation,” for weeks.
I wonder what pandemic-induced behaviour will persist even after we surface, like the celebrated groundhog, to test the atmosphere. What, for example, will I do with my extensive collection of masks? I imagine I will hold on to them, both as souvenirs to show my disinterested grandchildren, and because Dr. Fauci tells us we should wear them for the foreseeable future, until he declares this heard immune. It seems prudent to wear them in crowds in the winter anyway. I speculate that I could drastically reduce my seasonal bouts of bronchitis if I adhere to the same health protocols that I’ve observed for the last what-feels-like-a-decade. I began the pandemic feeling silly wearing a mask at Trader Joe’s. I lost that self-consciousness quickly, and frankly, now, my dear, I don’t give a damn anymore what people think. I now feel about wearing a mask in public as I do about wearing a seatbelt in the car; it’d be weird not to.
I wonder, too, about deeper more significant changes. I am not convinced that I will return to every activity, pastime, or even social interaction that took up pre-Covid-19 time. I miss certain things sorely. I want to sit and drink coffee or red wine with a few close friends who I’ve only seen from afar, or on screen, for way too long. But there are also things that I do not miss at all. I hope I have the fortitude to resist slipping back into the eddy of old, unsatisfying habits once we are free to roam about the world again. From the threshold of the den, I plan to channel Nancy Reagan: I will “just say no.”
I wonder how time will shape our view of this period. I keep reminding my adult children that it’s an historic period that they’re living through, and they should remember as much as possible because their own children will ask them what it felt like to have had Covid-19 usurp their lives for such a long period. I wonder if it will feel like a nightmare that we recall with a vague chill, and then shake off with the light of day – I imagine that will depend on how deeply and destructively the coronavirus’s spikes impaled each of us.
I do hope that each and every one of us will reflect on what we lost, but also what we gained in our hibernation. Bears may not contemplate such weighty issues as they begin to rummage around the forest, introducing their new-borns to their new environment, but shame on us if we don’t.
1: https://www.yellowstone.org/bear-hibernation-5-fun-facts/
2: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/24/science/hibernation-spring-bears-bees-bats-arctic-squirrels.html