Sweet Sapsicle Discovery Dripping with Eco-Anxiety
On a snowy forest preserve walk during New Year’s Eve-day, I noticed an amber-striped pair of icicles hanging like stalactites from the armpit of a deciduous tree. Upon further investigation, this new-to-me marvel turned out to be a sapsicle – a sweet phenomenon often reserved for late Winter or early Spring caused by sap reflowing during a thaw, and icing in return to cold. Steeped in awe, I found myself soul-searching for a metaphor, as we often do in ecotherapy.
It came a few weeks later with the contrast of an unseasonably warm, near-50-degree day at another local preserve – VERY out of character for a traditional January day in the Midwest: my shoes sunk into the goopy no-longer-frozen ground; the ripples on a lake floated like ghosts of the ice that had already left; and beiges and browns swept the forest where iridescent snow had once settled.
I found myself in grief and longing for the deep snow and frozen landscape that I remember as a reliable, consistent reality of Midwest Winters in my upbringing. Eco-anxiety loomed for the pair of cranes that flew overhead – a seemingly way too soon migration home – and uneasy, unsettling tightness spread in my chest as I wondered what they know that we don’t to be traveling back so soon. Deep stubbornness arose in resisting acceptance of the ad hoc, inconsistent freeze/thaw cycles as a Winter-new-normal. On top of all the ecological purposes cold and snow and ice serve in this region, I feel the wintering in my body this time of year and long for a landscape that reflects it.
Curiosity and empathy surfaced too – wondering what it might be like to a tree? To arrive at a deep, instinctual hibernation meant to last several months and then find yourself intermittently awoken from that slumber again and again. Grumpy and groggy are the least of what come to mind for me, although the research broadly labels it stress.
In a totally divergent shift, the next day I awoke to a surprise blanket of fresh snow, frigid cold temps, and blustery gusts whipping snowdust into an endless dance of descent. I felt such excitement and gratification peering out the window, literally bellowing “IT SNOWED!!!” in an inner child kind of moment bubbling with exhilaration and delight. And I felt the sweetness freezing in time – the hope and congruence and contentment and relief in seeing that “real Winter” is not all gone yet. With thin stripes of treasured frozen-tundra adventure memories from days past and satisfying hibernation vibes of icy, deeply still, serene quiet.
Don’t get me wrong, I still feel the anticipatory melancholy and loss of an approaching possible someday when Midwest Winters may be snowless, overhauled by starkly chaotic weather extremes, or some other uncertain phenomenon. Eco-grief and eco-anxiety burgeons for the ecosystem dominoes set to fall as a result. But for now, I am holding onto this rolling length of glazed, sapsicle-like impermanence, as the forecast suggests 40s temps to return and the recurrent freeze/thaw cycle of our Winter-new-normal will begin again.
