Years ago when I ran boats for a living, a woman I met asked me how I could drive a boat all day, do all the maintenance, like 12 to 16 hours a day, then party late into the night, get up and do it all again the next day. My answer was always, “Plenty of time to sleep in the winter.” Later we got married. One day in December she asked me why I slept late into the morning and then was tired and ready for bed at 8 or 9 at night. All I could say was “remember when I said there’s plenty of time to sleep in winter? Well, it’s winter.”
Feeling that way now as we get deep into the dark days. It will get down to five hours of daylight in another month and a half. So, yesterday driving to work in relatively warm weather and looking at bare, snowless ground the thought of bears came up for some reason, as in, are they still up and around, or have they gone into hibernation. Bears don’t truly hibernate, they just sleep through the winter rather than go completely dormant. Some even get up once in a while and wander around.
Still to be determined is what triggers the hibernation instinct. Is it cold, light, lack of food? Lack of light could be the answer. Maybe they just go to sleep one night, wake up somewhat the way we do, only they look around and think, oh hell it will be dark in another couple of hours, so why bother getting up at all,. Then they just roll over and go back to sleep.
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