Hibernaculum

Looking back at our house the day before yesterday, from within the park, I yearned to cycle home after just one circuit, to kiss off another ascent of the Dreaded Hill. I wanted my hibernaculum.

Isn't that a marvelous word? It sounds quasi-liturgical, like some sacred recess for holy men or relics. I found it in this article about "white nose syndrome," the mysterious ailment felling bats in upstate New York, reported in the New York Times with genuine poignancy:

Al Hicks was standing outside an old mine in the Adirondacks, the largest bat hibernaculum, or winter resting place, in New York State.

It was broad daylight in the middle of winter, and bats flew out of the mine about one a minute. Some had fallen to the ground where they flailed around on the snow like tiny wind-broken umbrellas, using the thumbs at the top joint of their wings to gain their balance.

All would be dead by nightfall. Mr. Hicks, a mammal specialist with the state's Environmental Conservation Department, said: "Bats don't fly in the daytime, and bats don't fly in the winter. Every bat you see out here is a 'dead bat flying,' so to speak."

That was how I felt: Dead Bat Flying. I fly poorly in the daytime, and not at all, if I can avoid it, in the winter. The afflicted bats, apparently, are scrawny specimens, with too little body fat to "arouse from their deep torpor."  I, too, am deeply torpid, but with plenty of body fat, and laboring around the park on my bicycle has so far yielded such minuscule progress towards strength and stamina that I'm sometimes ready to crawl back to my cave by my thumbs.

Yesterday I never made it to the park; instead, I cursed and struggled to get the bicycle into the car and over to the shop, where the kind people tweaked and goosed it up a little. (Pedal clips for more power. Battery-powered lights for night riding.) I stewed and mulled over whether to keep upgrading this lead-heavy hybrid or bite the bullet and trade up to a lighter one, all the while seeing red flashing dollar-danger-signs (You didn't sign on to spend a thousand dollars on this insanity!) By the time I got home, I may have turned fully into either a White Nose Bat or what author Anne Lamott calls Menopausal Death Crone; either way, there was nothing left for the scheduled training ride that night. In the park. In the dark. In the rain.

Sometimes, it is good to get right down into wind-broken umbrella state. There is nowhere to go but up then, and there's a certain peace in knowing that. If I stay in the hibernaculum, nothing will get better. If I go out in the park and keep going around, something's got to happen eventually. Right, guys?

Image: Bat Conservation International

Comments

[Thew]

I like that word, too.

We have bats in Prospect. Or had them, in the past. What will this year bring? They like the Long Meadow, the Nethermead, and the Lullwater, where bugs gather in rich numbers.