Animal fears

BY SANDRA WINTER

I become afraid on days like this — the thermometer on my outside door reads zero degrees. The wind chill is below zero. I can hear the moan of the wind through the windows and feel the cold air coming in around the sashes. It is 61 degrees in my apartment.

I am afraid on days like this. The fear comes from my animal self: wordless and primitive. My mammalian brain knows this organism would soon perish in such extreme weather. It knows without the instincts that govern survival — without the millions of years of coded information, this cold force of nature would surely kill me. I do not have the innate, unconscious comfort and safety of a body equipped with layers of fur and fat; fur that has differentiated into layers that would protect me, the hairs of that fur hollow and able to retain heat. I do not have eyes in deep sockets with thick eyelids and thick rounded ears. I have none of that. My tissue-paper epidermis offers no protection. In the service of my evolution, the body that would keep me alive on a day and in weather like this has been forfeited.

I also lack the instincts to know where to hide and how to find food in this frozen world.

It would never occur to me to hibernate. Instead, my brain says, “Buy the L.L. Bean down jacket with the hood, buy the 20-degree below Sorel boots — wear a balaclava and down mittens. Move fast.

Don’t slip on the ice because these expensive, colorful and inadequate substitutions for fur will not keep you alive more than a few minutes.”

So, I say to myself, “Self, if you are going to fall, don’t hit your head — being unconscious will not be advantageous on a day like this. Don’t go where there are no other Homo sapiens. If one saw you fallen on the ground, with their

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To the editor: highly developed frontal cortex, their evolved index finger and the technology in their pocket, they would call 911 and you would be saved.”

Come to think of it, the same is as true at 120 degrees as it is at zero. I lack the thick scales of a lizard that conserve moisture and protect from the searing rays of the sun. There is a narrow range of temperatures and environmental conditions where my survival rate is optimal.

In the marvelous scheme of evolution I have been assured a survival that was once guaranteed by my very cellular structure which has been replaced by and dependent upon technology and my wits.

Marblehead resident Sandra Winter composed the “Animal fears” during the recent cold snap. For years, she helped organize the Marblehead Festival of the Arts Writer World Workshops. She says writing is her “go-to place.”