I’m in Denver this week, where I’ve been snowed in and unable to leave the house for two days, after one of the worst blizzards on recent record in Colorado. Of course, we didn’t lose power, so we didn’t lose heat, light, or the [blessed] internet, and therefore the worst consequences were a little bit of cabin fever and a sort back from shoveling.

With plenty of time to read my news feeds, I’ve just learned of a new climate change indicator emerging in the bear family. Not arctic polar bears this time; rather, brown bears in the mountainous region of northern Spain, who have come out mid-winter to let us know that things aren’t the way they used to be. Whereas freezing temperatures used to keep them holed up all winter long storing energy and body mass, the weather’s now mild enough that food is available well into the winter, and hibernation is no longer a…bear necessity.

There are a number of natural directions of thought toward which this finding might lead, but what it has made me consider is the way our storytelling traditions, and the typical anecdotal learning tools we use in teaching kids about the world, are going to have to change to accommodate radical changes in the workings of the nature. Think of all of the bear characters that populate our childhood narratives! Hibernation has always been an essential trait of a bear, just as tales about birds or whales have used characteristic migration patterns as story structures, and the seasonal transformation of skin and coat (as with snakes or ermine) has come to represent an animal protagonist’s personality trait or magical ability. The things we’ve always considered to be ingrained, natural processes upon which we can depend to develop lessons and useful associations are changing with the climate. What a strange disruption to a very human tradition.

If bears stop hibernating, what kind of stories will we tell kids in 30, 40, 50 years? And since I’m a solution-seeker, I also wonder how can we use new stories to get young people not only aware of the problems they face as they inherit this broken planet, but empowered to take redesigning the future into their own hands, so that winter stays cold enough for a season-long nap.

-- SarahRich