Soaring 100-Plus Temps Mean A Week (Or Longer) Of Torpidity
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.
Hill Country Living
By Coulter Fussell
I read on the internet the other day that there is a real, scientific phenomenon with accompanying real, scientific term for what we humans may think of as a sort of “reverse hibernation.” It’s called Estivation and, according to Google, it’s “when the animal becomes torpid during the hot summer.”
So, if you needed an excuse to check out on life duties next week while the temperatures soar into the triple digits – this is it. My own anxiety about the weather this coming week was certainly eased when science declared us all cosmically bound by our innate animal instincts toward survival to stay indoors, crank the AC, turn on Investigation Discovery and become torpid.
I learned my lesson about the importance of estivation on the day of Watermelon Carnival when I decided to build a pea gravel pit in my backyard for my husband’s grill. Since it was too hot to go to the Carnival, I reckoned I would stay home and do some yard work. In retrospect, I can see that I was already in the clear throes of heat exhaustion as that reasoning was obviously a sign of mental confusion and possible stroke. Needless to say, the pea gravel pit is only halfway finished as I got so hot that I entered an involuntary state of estivation that day and, honestly, have yet to fully re-emerge.
I did venture out to do a little poll-working at Sylva Rena for the primaries a couple of weeks ago. Thankfully, the rain that day eased much of the heat so I was fully functioning to appreciate the pre-dawn drive out to the Sylva Rena Community Center. If you’ve never taken a left after Dunn’s at 5:30 a.m. and to see the pink sun crest the hill and rise up over the rolling, pastured fields, you are missing out. It’s truly beautiful out at that spot and it makes you want to be a morning cow so you can see it every day.
The poll-working was pretty chill this time around as it was a primary and the Democrats’ ticket didn’t have a whole lot of action on it. The Republicans were the ones who showed up as they had a few more decisions to make. I suspect that several Democrats were Republicans for a day, as well, for strategic reasons.
The whole time I was poll-working I was also reading a book called “The Fall of the House of Zeus” about a regular restaurant customer of mine back in Oxford who was, shall we say, very involved in the puppet mastery of Mississippi money, litigation and politics. It was interesting to read that book while watching Mississippi voters come into the Sylva Rena Community Center to cast ballots while wearing their overalls and carrying hand carved walking canes. I was simultaneously seeing two polar opposite ends of the same process. One guy, covered in dirt from head to toe, came in to vote but had to leave and comeback because he’d left his ID in his tractor.
Those Sylva Rena Beat 3 voters are a nice lot. Everyone was so friendly and many of them thanked us poll-workers for our time and attention. It’s almost as if, in real life, people aren’t all that divided. Ultimately, we all want the same basic things – and, this week, that is to be torpid.
