March 21, 1858. It is peculiarly interesting that this, which is one of our winter birds also, should have a note with which to welcome to spring. —Thoreau
The chickadees began their spring call this week. I heard it Monday morning, as the twilight of dawn now comes earlier, with daylight joining morning a little more in earnest. Still, I found myself awed at how they know, how their .3 ounce bodies (!) with small little wisps of feet and insulated puff of feathers suddenly feel implored to sing a different tune, to begin pairing—which apparently can take a bit longer than in other species.
I’m always amazed at how a bird so small survives—thrives—in dark winters, subzero temps, and less than ⅓ of an ounce of body between earth and sky, so exquisitely attuned to where it lives and its surroundings that it announces it with confidence and enthusiasm. To feel that thrum of energy coursing through the land, your impossibly tiny veins, your voice, the air.
I looked up the daylight calendar and on February 1, we had nine hours and 42 minutes of daylight. By February 6, the light had grown by 24 minutes; by February 13 another 35 minutes. On Monday, when I first heard them call in the morning, we had gained an hour and 36 minutes in just over two weeks.
At which point I thought—how could they not know such dramatic changes of light, recognize the planet’s turn towards the sun, of what it means—even though any leaf or blossom won’t appear until late May? Maybe when you’re that small and mighty every new angle, vibration, ounce of heat would be irrepressible in your own small limbs.
I can feel the gaining light in my own body, a slowly increasing sense of energy, the excitement when you suddenly realize—it always seems sudden—that the daylight is lasting past six o’clock. It comes so quickly—which is also partly an effect of daylight savings and standard time exaggerating the swings in odd ways1. But I can’t help but wish that I too could feel its pulse, know the exact angle of light by which to begin a new song.
Chickadee cognition is a marvel—once dismissed as impossibly small and bird-brained, it’s now known that they have a rate of cognition and memory that rivals crows and ravens. And in higher latitudes, this cognition increases—the need to adapt to cold winters necessitating increased caches of food. They have to eat 10% of their body weight each day in order to survive the cold, their bodies lowering their temps at night and then shivering to raise it in the morning when they set off again. They live in one place for life and are incredibly long-lived for such a small and fastly beating heart—up to eleven years if not older. Their memories increase and adapt with age, knowing every crevice and branch of the birch trees in which they so often spend their days. They must also be able to sense the slow awakening of sap in the branches of the birches they live on, which will begin rising next month.
Before the seventeenth century in England, the world and universe—all of creation essentially, was thought to be a written text—termed the Doctrine of the Spheres. The idea being that god spoke through the world, the planets and stars—each creature and rock and tree a sign to read and interpret. Animals, plants, minerals were thought to represent what parts of the body they could heal or have a connection with. While this later fell out of use and was derided as ‘primitive’ in an age when ideas of science were taking shape, there is more to it than a simple overly superficial assumption based on appearance—it is clear that it also serves as a mnemonic, a way to remember and keep track of which plants heal which maladies.
It also speaks to a world that was not yet locked into binaries, dissecting the world into categories such as history and nature. The world was reflected back to itself—seen not as other so much as a mirror, a twin—a reflection of ourselves in the plants, trees, animals, sky, earth, and soil.
I see the chickadees flitting in across the tree branches, their feathers insulated to more than an inch around their small bodies. And I thought of the wool sweater I wear, made from the fleece of sheep, adding bulk to my own body. The chickadee’s quick movements, their boldness especially when the temperatures dip them into even more action, feels like a calling from where they are to where I am—that we are all alive in this same land, this light, adapting with memory to move through this high latitude world in place.
Anne Conway was a woman of the seventeenth century who argued there was no separation between any living being or matter on earth. The world and everything of it was created inseparably, interconnected—all one, just different modalities.
Conway was a philosopher whose name appeared in print only when another philosopher and friend—Henry More—dedicated his work to her. Her own work, Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, never had her name attached to it. Her work, however, served as a source and foundation for other more well-known thinkers, such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Francis Mercury van Helmont.
Conway refuted the dualistic philosophy of Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza, citing each of them in turn to refuse their argument for splitting mind from body, and nature (i.e., everything other than elite white males) made into machine. She claimed matter and spirit as inseparable entities. She offered an example: if the spirit or consciousness reacts in sync with the body when wounded and in pain, there is proof of its inseparability. If the soul or spirit was separate, it would simply flee in such instances. She wrote:
…Infinite Divisibility…how all creatures from the highest to the lowers are inseparably united with one another…by which also they act one upon another at the greatest distance; and this is the Foundation of all Sympathy and Antipathy which happens in creatures.2
While Descartes argued for the essence of [white elite] man is his ability to think—ushering in ages of thought that split the world apart into dualism—Conway was a monist, a vitalist. She argued and created a philosophy that allows for continuity between humankind, animal, plant, mineral. Not only does this continuity exist, she argued, but importantly it is the effects of motion or action between an individual substance—an animal, plant, etc.—and another. Later monists would not argue for a direct interaction between creatures and the earth and one another, but Conway was adamant. Every creature in interacting with others brings an enhancement of relation to every other. That in these interactions, all are working towards an eventual good. Not progress, so much as reaching higher towards the ineffability of the divine—which she believed took shape on earth as wisdom and goodwill. She believed that while suffering exists, it is only when we’re suffering that we need the “ministry” of other creatures. A metaphysics of sympathy with all—a sympathetic harmony of things, which allows us to see wisdom.
Despite the impact that Conway had on other philosophers of her time—including other women such as Elizabeth of Bohemia, the brilliant Emilie du Châtelet, Madeleine de Scudéry, and Madeleine de Sablé—her work never had her name attached to it, as it was deemed improper to her reputation even after her death. While known as a woman of education and a great mind, her work was published years after her death in Latin—the language of scholarship—by her friend, Francis Mercury Van Helmont. It was two years later published in English, but only in a small print run, in a compilation with the writings of others. It fell into relative obscurity until it was republished in 1982.
As I write, the sun is high and bright, the morning bone cold with splinters of ice forming spontaneously in the light, the birch tree branches laced with frost and ice. Chickadees come to the ledge to eat outside the window, their silhouettes flitting across the walls in soft bombs of shadow. It’s pure delight. Despite the anger at the maddening world, I am still undeniably affected by their impossible lightness, their chatter and song, the proximity of their existence.
Chickadees recognize the alarm calls of other creatures, and vice versa. To take Conway’s idea, this could be seen as a testament to the fact that we are all inseparable from one another, that we can and do interact and affect one another.
Because of the chickadees this week, I noticed the growing light more keenly. Because of their call, I thought of spring despite it being 7f this morning. Their call a notice of excitement, of changes and life in the landscape, in what would otherwise seem an implacable world of winter.
If I hadn’t noticed, interacted with, listened to them, I would have missed it.
In March we finally get used to waking to greet daylight again after the months of winter dark, only to have it taken away from the morning for another three weeks or so, while the daylight gained is added to the evening—making it impossibly bright until eight or nine while it’s still freezing out. An irony if there ever was one: that in the spring, Alaska of all places pretends at ‘daylight savings,’ when the world up here is flooded with light. Another way the powers that be ignore this place’s rhythms and high latitude. Alaska once comprised four different time zones, but it changed to one time zone for nearly the entire state in 1983, despite the state being as large as to span from coast to coast of the ‘continental’ US. So the clock and daylight rarely match up in ways that feel intuitive.
Quoted in Duran, Jane. 1989. “Anne Viscountess Conway: A Seventeenth Century Rationalist.” Hypatia. Spring, Vol. 4, No. 1
.3 ounce bodies!!!
Thoroughly enjoyed reading your newsletter today. It's a gem. Thank you!