Fight or flight

Evolutionary biologists point out human beings are hardwired to display two primary reactions when confronted by danger or an imminent threat. It’s called the fight-or-flight response. Will you stand your ground and confront the challenge head-on, or will you run away?

From an evolutionary standpoint either option is appropriate when survival is at stake. Having evolved through eons of natural selection, the fight-or-flight response was great for bands of stick-wielding cave people dealing with those pesky saber-toothed tigers.

However, in modern times where it is no longer considered polite to go around bonking things on the head with clubs, the suppression of the fight-or-flight response only results in increased stress.

Perhaps one situation where this evolutionary Hobson’s Choice is still very evident in modern Maine is in how people deal with winter. The cold and snow and dark offer everything one could want in the way of primal threats to individual survival, although with petrochemical furnaces, cable television and Shop ’n Saves it is not always so much physical survival as mental soundness that the majority find ultimately at risk.

Some people approach winter Down East with the classic flight response. They retreat every fall to Florida, or at the very least take several weeks or a month off and travel, usually to warmer climes. That’s great if you have several million frequent flyer miles, or an upper-middle-class income. But that in truth is beyond the means of many Mainers.

Most, it seems, choose to fight — but not in the literal sense. I know of no one who can wrestle away snowstorms or bat away below-zero temperatures.

Instead, people wage a mental battle to adapt their own minds until they embrace and look forward to the snow instead of being repulsed in horror at the thought of another icy storm.

The real secret, of course, is toys — lots of toys. Skis, skates, snowshoes, snowboards, sleds, ice tents and any number of snow-throwin’, two-cyclin’, quick switchin’, all-wheel-drivin’, blue smokin’, ice-augerin’, noise-makin’ fuel-guzzlin’ toys.

I saw ample proof of this last past winter while stopping by Eagle Lake on my snowmobile. Everywhere I looked there were people ice fishing, cross country skiing, snow shoeing and generally having a good time outdoors even though with the wind chill it was well below zero.

I’ve seen the same thing up north and in the Midcoast area. Contrary to the stereotypical image of Mainers locked away in drafty cabins reading Jack London novels by candlelight, most people here like winter, and get outside a lot and stay active.

Winter is, in effect, a huge excuse for Mainers to play with cool stuff we cannot use the rest of the year.

Want more proof? Just look at those macho guys in jacked-up four-wheel drive pickups who can’t wait for a storm so they can skid recklessly around corners and bull their way through drifts four feet — no wait — eight feet deep! Ask anyone who plows snow and they’ll tell you seriously it’s a business. But the real reason they love it is that it’s wicked fun to snap on that flashing yellow light, pass Saab Turbos from New Jersey stuck in snowbanks and send all that snowy powder flying hither and yon.

If there is a “winter-as-evil” cult in Maine, television weather people have to be the high priests. Cue the urgent staccato soundtrack it’s time for Panic Center.

With the first hint of a flake they don heavy sweaters (quite foolish, actually, under those hot studio lights) and blurt dire warnings about ferocious “near-record-breaking” conditions outside. People’s stress levels invariably and artificially rise.

To prove how bad it is rookie reporters stand out on the back porch in a gale or on Portland street corners in a blizzard without hats or gloves and warn everyone to stay inside “if you are smart.”

Where’s that leave them?

The fight-or-flight response of viewers is unconsciously activated by this oh-so-serious soundtrack and endlessly repeated predictions of frosty white doom. Like lemmings, people run to the nearest grocery store buying all the milk, bread, Diet Pepsi and Little Debbie Nutty Bars in sight just in case they can’t get out of their driveways afore noon the next day.

If these television folks dislike winter so much, or believe Mainers’ panic threshold to be so low, maybe they ought to take off those ridiculous sweaters and head south themselves. Or maybe we could get a few of those guys in the 4-bys to bonk ’em on the head with a club so they’ll shut up and the rest of us can just relax and enjoy the snow.

Running in Dreams

From the time he was a pup, Jake loved the mountains. Sure, you’d have a tough time getting him out of a lake or a stream or even a puddle, for that matter, but on a height of land, where the wind always blows, is where he liked best to be. 

On a summit, he would lie in the sunshine as close to the edge as possible, his face directly into the breeze, chomping endlessly on a stick or just looking out at the horizon sniffing the fresh, clean air.

Jake loved the idea of mountains. For more than a decade, he would pester endlessly as soon as the backpack came down off the coat rack or hiking boots made their appearance from the closet. In the truck on the way to a climb, I’d ask him if he was a mountain dog. He would look at me out of the corner of his eye and give a howl of approval.

Each time we’d climb he would race ahead on the trail. Every now and then he would stop and turn around and stare as if to see what was holding up his human companions. There was no excuse, he was sure. There was a mountain to climb, and there was no time to waste.

His heart was strong, his senses keen, and his spirit of adventure high. Back and forth he would run, covering twice the distance in half the time.

Jake was not reckless in his eagerness. Much to the dismay of more than one hiking companion, he would not hesitate to pass on a narrow ledge, keeping to the inside, nudging people closer to the drop. Later at night, as he would doze by my chair, his legs would sometimes explode in motion as he continued to run through doggie dreams.

Four strong legs gave him an advantage on the flat but, when things were hand-over-hand, he would wait impatiently for a boost. Up he’d go with no idea of what he would find above. His trust was absolute.

People too often try to ascribe human emotions to their pets. I think the unswerving loyalty and trust of a faithful old dog is the true expression of those virtues. The human version of those qualities, I believe, are not the original, and too often, a poor imitation.

Over the years, Jake enjoyed many sections of the Appalachian Trail in Maine, numerous summits Down East, and every mountain on Mount Desert Island, most more than once.

But slowly and surely, Jake’s back legs succumbed to arthritis. It hurt him, I know, to be left behind when the backpack came down off the hook and the boots came out of the closet. He would come over and nuzzle my hands while I tried to lace my boots. I never could make him understand why I had to leave him behind.

Still, there was snow to romp in, squirrels to chase out of the birdfeeders, and plenty of cars turning around in the driveway to bark at. Life was slower, naps longer, and there was less and less running in dreams. But overall, it was good; that is, until this spring.

At first it looked like a simple lame paw, maybe a sore elbow. The reality came to be bone cancer in his shoulder. For a dog with two bad legs, a third becomes the last straw. He tried his hardest for two months, managing pretty well on three legs. But the unflappable squirrels no longer excited him. His eyes made it clear that the pain was increasing.

Finally, on Monday, with the help of close friend who is a veterinarian, Jake lay down in sunshine on the front porch, and his strong heart was stilled.

I have Jake’s ashes now. I promised him long ago that, when the time came, we’d go for one last hike. I’m going to wait for a day when the conditions are right. Alone, I’ll get the backpack down and lace up my boots. I’ll climb to the top of Jake’s favorite mountain and stand close to the edge. I’ll say my last goodbye to a faithful old dog, and I’ll let him run again in dreams on the wind.

Somewhere in "Eastern" Maine

Just where in the hell is Eastern Maine? Now, before anyone writes in to say it’s just to the right of Western Maine when you are standing and staring to the north, let me say that place, not direction, is my problem.

You see, in the last week or so, the U.S. Postal Service opened a new high-tech mail-handling center in Hermon or Hampden or somewhere north of here that begins with an “H.”

It used to be that in the old days each and every post office cancelled mail individually. Looking at a postmark before opening a letter was half the fun. “Oh, look, it’s from East Overshoe. Must be from Cousin Edweena.” You catch my drift.

A few years back, some bright star in the nighttime decided that all mail from these parts would be sent to Bangor (44 miles north) to be postmarked and sorted before redistribution. Bar Harbor mail for delivery to Bar Harbor, even to someone down the block, went to Bangor first.

Residents of Down East, Maine, a place which for the record is not so much a quasi-official geographic area as it is a state of mind, just shook their heads. It didn’t make much sense to folks to try and improve mail service by loading it into a truck, hauling it to Bangor, and then carting it back here before having someone walk 20 feet across the post office from the “IN” slot to put it in a post office box. Common sense apparently went south as our mail headed north.

The move ranked right up there with making the cost of a first-class stamp 29 cents or some other God-awful odd number, whereby understanding Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity seems child’s play compared to the job of figuring the total for multiple stamp purchases.

Rerouting messages the long way may be fine for long-distance telephone calls where sometimes it is faster to go from point A to point B via Pittsburgh. That medium runs at the speed of light. However, this (insert cheap shot here) is the U.S. Postal Service we are talking about.

Still, despite this foolishness, at least the postmark we got was for a real place. Most of us have been to Bangor, if not out of some primordial need to patronize stores full of gimcracks and thingamabobs we don’t need and really can’t afford, at least as a pit stop on the way to or from somewhere else.

There was at least some comfort in knowing, “Hey, that’s where my mail is sleeping tonight.”

Now what we have instead are the words “Eastern Maine” and one of those funky little computer-generated bar codes across the bottom of the envelope. This insures that no human being will actually read the address and understand where the letter is headed. Now the new, near-fully automated mail-handling facility located somewhere in “Eastern Maine” will continue to send you someone else’s mail by mistake even when you write, “Return to sender” or “Wrong box” on it. It will never reach the rightful owner until you scratch the hell out of the bar code with a crayola crayon, which forces the machine to kick it out and holler for a low-tech human attendant.

Now, remember, this is not the fault of your local, hardworking post office employees and postmasters. They are not any happier about having to follow this screwball system than anyone else.

What I want to know is why, with all these high-tech gizmos, can’t we have a more personalized approach to the mail instead of the cold, impersonal designation of “Eastern Maine”?

Try addressing a letter to “Joe Anybody” in “Eastern Maine” and see how fast the post office rejects it. There is in fact no such place as “Eastern Maine.” In truth, the new service center is on the “west” side of the Penobscot River and not even actually in “Eastern Maine” — if we knew for sure where that was.

The rest of Maine, I’m told, gets mail stamped “Western Maine.” See, it just goes to prove there are two Maines, separate and yet apparently equal in the geographically insensitive eyes of the U.S. Postal Service.

Ultimately, we haven’t made mail service any better by spending these millions of dollars; we’ve barely arrested it from getting progressively worse. And, along the way, we’ve lost a real measure of community identity. What’s that worth?

It just goes to show you that, if you give the government the latest in computers, millions of dollars, and some multiple of 44-cent stamps, that, and a trip to Bangor and back, will get you a first-class letter delivered to and from somewhere in “Eastern Maine.”

Agents of Entropy

Some say the universe will come to its end with a whimper, others say a bang. I think the last sound will be a dog barking somewhere in the distance.

You see, dogs, I have recently come to realize, are the agents of entropy. Chaos is their name, disorder is their game.

And you don’t have to be Albert Einstein or Steven Hawking to know that this is true.

Both those respected scientists understood exactly what German physicist Ludwig Boltzman was talking about in his second law of thermodynamics which states that disorder in the universe always increases with time. The measurement of the total of that disorder is called entropy.

Boltzman, I theorize, must have had a dog. Maybe even a German Shepherd.

One moment Boltzman is leaning back in his lederhosen quaffing a fine Bavarian brew and contemplating the mysteries of the universe when “bang” — a totally-wired dog covered with mud and panting with breath that could put extra rings around a couple of gaseous planets does a controlled crash into his lap. “Eureka!” he undoubtedly shouted, as his hypothesis took shape.

Using Boltzman’s logic you can predict that if you leave a young dog alone for a time in a room, or a pickup truck for that matter, you will return to find that entropy has indeed increased as evidenced by the advanced state of disorder you will surely discover.

A part of the second law offers that when you combine the entropy or disorder of two systems, the total will be greater than the sum of the parts. Right again.

Leave two puppies alone in same said room or truck and you will indeed find more than twice as much destruction when you return.

Although I’m no rocket scientist, I think I understand exactly how Boltzman arrived at these far-reaching conclusions. I, too, have a German Shepherd. Her name is Shadow.

After observing her behavior for the last year or so, I’ve developed a few not-so-universal laws of canine thermodynamics of my own. None of these theories, I might add, seem to contradict the pioneering work of Boltzman or even Einstein or Hawking, for that matter. Shadow, who is sitting on the stairs and watching over my shoulder as I write this, agrees. She double-checked the math.

So, here goes:

            1. Nature abhors a vacuum. Therefore, dogs instinctively track mud, leaves, snow or just about anything else onto any newly-vacuumed carpet.

            2. What goes down, often comes up. You don't have to be a hairball to figure this one out.

            3. Complex systems tend to shed their parts — ergo, dogs shed hair ­— usually nonstop. See number one.

            4. What happens when an irresistible object comes up against an immovable force. Translation: a dog's willingness to obey a direct order is inversely proportional to your insistence and desire that it do so.

            5. Pups are the protons of the macro world. In quantum mechanics, scientists cannot pinpoint where an electron or proton in an atom is at any given point but only calculate the probability of its location at a given time. Anyone who has tried to find and corral a frisky pup who is gleefully bounding about the neighborhood after sneaking between your legs as you go out the door knows this first-hand.

            6. Puppies never chew up anything that costs less than $50 to replace. (There is no scientific allegory here but it does seem to be some sort of unwritten natural law. It is similar to the rule that almost any non-traumatic injury to a dog can be cured by a $50 visit to the veterinarian and a $35 envelope of those little orange pills.)

            7. Nothing, not even light, can escape from a dog’s food dish. Try putting anything remotely edible into the black hole that is the supper bowl and see if it ever makes it back.

            8. E=MC2. Einstein’s general theory of relativity states that energy equals matter times the speed of light squared. Dog energy equals Milk Bones times the amount you spend on crates, leashes, collars, pull toys, chew bones, tennis balls and trips to the doggie timeshare condo (boarding kennel) in Ellsworth — squared.

            9. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In physics this deals with the transfer of energy but it holds true with dogs. You must expend at least as much energy keeping up with them and picking up after them as they burn trying to stay ahead of you. That is a lot of energy.

Any garden-variety physicist will tell you that the only way to slow entropy is by the application of more and more of the above said energy.

Still, it is psychically, and indeed scientifically, impossible at this point to reverse the process.

The universe with its billions of galaxies, millions of exploding stars, and scores of class M planets covered with houses full of puppies, is gradually, inexorably succumbing to chaos.

So take comfort in knowing you are up against cosmic forces the next time you come home to find your magazines shredded, the furniture upset and a smiling, lovable puppy jumping and jumping excitedly in the middle of the room, waiting for you to come join the fun.

Stop whimpering. Take Rover for a walk. Pause and look up at the stars. Then listen closely and you, too, may hear the bark of a dog echoing faintly in the distance.

Getting to a Stopping Place

According to author Robert Fulghum, everything he really needed to know he learned in kindergarten. For whatever reason, I was a late bloomer.

Most of the fundamental conventional wisdom of life, particularly in regard to the unwritten rules of the workplace, was passed onto me by co-workers in the steel mill I worked in after graduating from high school in Connecticut and later on at countless construction sites in mid-coast Maine.

It was there that I learned that, in America anyway, people get paid for what they know, not what they do. If we were all paid for what we do, a ditch digger would be a millionaire and stock brokers and other desk jockeys would be on food stamps.

In those blue-collar work places I heard the oft-repeated warning that it is important to “get your time in somewhere,” since retirement comes much quicker than most 20-year-olds will ever realize.

I also found out the hard way what being “called on the carpet” meant after being summoned from the concrete floor of the warehouse to the superintendent’s comfortable office because of some minor rules infraction.

On my first day on a construction crew, 20 years ago, I was told by laughing co-workers that I “hammered like an old woman.” Nowadays, I would probably take that as a compliment.

Back then, during the unenlightened ’70's, it was just another of a constant stream of verbal jabs aimed at testing the “new” guy's tolerance and limits of good humor. My younger brother, too, revelled in my inexperienced grip and offered copious amounts of unwanted advice.

What did it matter, I countered, while taking twice as many hits to drive home a spike, as long as the work got done.

And there, among rafters and the ring of saws I also grew to understand and cherish the wisdom of my carpenter grandfather, who in life, and in work, always measured twice because “you only cut once.”

But, perhaps the most valuable lesson came from my stepdad. A man of great experience in matters of construction, he would never interrupt someone in the middle of a task to have them do something else just because that is when he happened to think of it.

Knowing the importance of flow, he would gently suggest that when someone “got to a stopping place” would they please give priority to this or that.

Finding a stopping place — what a wonderful concept.

How often these days do people take the time to find a place to logically end or temporarily set aside one pursuit before beginning another? Not just in physical tasks but in any endeavor, in our relationships and in our lives.

In that one expression lies a tacit understanding of the basic human abhorrence of loose ends and a need for continuity and completeness. Getting to a stopping place assumes and indeed demands detailed knowledge of the process at hand — its beginning, its middle, and its end.

It carries, too, an unspoken acknowledgement that other tasks and other people are as important as the one immediately at hand and that, given enough time, patience and perseverance, everything will ultimately get done.

While building my own house a few years ago, I was fortunate to have the help of many friends and relatives of various abilities.  On more than one occasion I unfortunately could not resist the temptation to tell them how if they just held their hammer a little differently and used more wrist action it would be a lot easier.

Their reactions were predictable — exactly the same as mine years ago.

I forgot that it was not their carpentry skills but their love and friendship they brought first and foremost to the job.

Despite their blisters and pains, and, indeed, because of them, the house got done.

Still, when I needed someone to give me a hand with some particularly unwieldy task, I did not forget my stepdad’s words and their underlying wisdom.

“I could use a hand over here with this big beam,” I would ask. “No rush. Just let me know when you get to a stopping place.”