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.