Leif the Lucky (Ingri & Edgar P. d’Aulaire, 1941) was a treasure of my grade school years. My mother encouraged books set long ago or far away, and this was both. Besides, I liked the cover. Leif’s father, the Viking Erik the Red, sailed west from Norway and Iceland to an icy coast he called “Greenland” to attracted settlers. Leif later sailed on to North America, five hundred years before Columbus.

A modern true adventure story rekindled my fascination with Greenland. Rescue Below Zero (Ian Mackersey, 1954) recounts how an airplane, sent to drop supplies to a British research mission in the middle of the icecap, crashed into packed snow over 8,000 feet of ice. The crew survived but the plane would never fly again.

They were in radio contact with Thule Air Base, 480 miles away. Rescue by airlift should be straightforward, I thought. Not so. Helicopters could not fly that far and back. Planes that dropped supplies by parachute were not designed to land on snow and ice, much less take off again. To get enough lift at high altitude, they needed to be as light as possible. That meant carrying just enough fuel to make the round trip, leaving no room for error.

​No spoilers here. To me, Greenland remains a land of mystery and suspense. 

A college friend long ago told me she’d been trying to think of somebody normal. “Oh, Anne in fourth grade!” my friend said. “Anne was entirely normal.”

I think of that when I hear complaints, “Crazy weather! It never used to be like this.” Hot, cold, wet, dry, snowy, snowless: to hear folks talk, it’s never within the norm. Don’t get me wrong; I believe in climate change, but that's about long-term trends, not day-to-day variation. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Long Winter is set during the very real “hard winter” of 1880-81. I built gigantic snow castles one winter as a child and got stuck in an April blizzard in 1975. Which years didn’t set a record of some sort, one day or another? There’s little so normal as abnormal weather.

When my doctor says, “entirely normal,” she means “common and no cause for concern.” A statistician’s “normal” involves the distribution of probabilities along a bell-shaped curve. Often, though, labeling normal or abnormal reflects the binary thinking that evolved to help us survive. It enables snap judgments like “safe or unsafe?” when there’s no time for nuance. Most of life is more nuanced than binary. That includes weather, people, and more. Variation is entirely normal.

Image: Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Unsplash.

Revolution. Invasion. Coup d’état. Countless governments have been changed by force over the centuries. It’s called regime change when an external power ousts one government and replaces it with another. The wishes of the target population don’t matter; what counts is the interest of the intervening power. It doesn’t always turn out well.

Honduras, 1911: control of resources. Americans developed a taste for bananas. Honduras had the climate and soil to grow them. The U.S.-based United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) acquired land and built infrastructure to make the economy completely dependent on bananas for export. In 1911, U.S. Marines helped install a Honduran president willing to take orders from United Fruit. The American author O. Henry coined the term “banana republic” with Honduras in mind.

Iran, 1953: superpower rivalry. The Cold War pitted Western capitalism against Soviet-style state control. After the elected parliament of Iran voted to nationalize the country’s oil industry, Britain and the U.S. collaborated to orchestrate a coup. The pro-Western monarch Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi promoted economic growth, squelched dissent, and controlled elections for the next quarter century. Islamist militants overthrew him in 1979.

Iraq, 2003: national security. After a U.S.-led coalition thwarted an Iraqi conquest of neighboring Kuwait in 1991, some regretted letting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein stay in charge. Fears grew that he was abetting terrorists and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. Al-Qaeda’s attack on the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, added a sense of urgency. With Congressional authorization, the U.S. and a few allies invaded Iraq. Saddam was captured and executed. In the power vacuum left by the 2003 invasion, U.S. troops fought and died in Iraq for eight more years. No weapons of mass destruction or links to al-Qaeda were ever found.

Other examples abound. It is easier to eject an old regime than to establish an effective new one.

Image: Photo by @mhrezaa on Unsplash.

We’ve turned the page to a whole new year. We dive back into the familiar schedule of tasks, meetings, and social activities, plus any unfinished business we couldn’t squeeze into December. The fresh calendar is already packed with hopes and opportunities. We resolve to throw ourselves into new ambitions for self-improvement or saving the world.

Three quarters of New Year’s resolutions fail within the first week. Nature suggests a reason.

Plants and animals slow down to conserve resources through the winter. Tree roots preserve essential functions underground, while branches overhead wait for spring. Many animals withdraw into sleeplike states of hibernation and torpor to save energy. Our prehistoric ancestors, too, evolved to pace themselves to the season. Instead of pushing ahead, what would happen if we let ourselves curl up with a hot drink, cozy covers, and a book, movie, or jigsaw puzzle?

I don’t know the answer. Some of us might find joy and comfort. Some might sink deeper into seasonal affective disorder. And some might strive to find a balance that feeds both body and spirit.

Image: Photo by Lucas George Wendt on Unsplash.