Acclimatization

I have been reading of the Civil War again. I do this from time to time, dive into the Civil War. Lucky we are that we had a Civil War, or else a lot of historians, writers, academic and romances won’t have a pot to piss in. On the American side of the rock the Civil War is a big pot.

One of the intrigues of the Civil War was the response of northern veterans to the famous soft clime of Dixieland. Letters home telling how after the war they were “comin’ back to Arkansas or Mississippi ’cause it don’t do winter like Wisconsin.” With the surrender of Lee and the de-mobbing of the 54 regiments from Wisconsin, coincidentally the least of all the western states but the third highest casualty total, Governor Lewis appealed to these same veterans to stay in Wisconsin and not leave for greener, warmer pastures. He meant the Confederacy. Despite his plea many did emigrate to the south, cheap land was an attraction, cheap labor, cheap winter.

Cordelia Harvey, widow of Governor Harvey, who drowned while visiting the Wisconsin regiments at Shiloh, came to the assistance of wounded Wisconsin soldiers languishing in southern hospitals. She petitioned to both War Departments to allow her to take these wounded north, for what she thought “better, more healing air.” “Bracing” was her word for the clime of Wisconsin. I do not know if there is a statue of Cordelia Harvey anywhere in this state but there surely should be one.

I have my doubts if many veterans of the Gulf Wars would find the climate of the Middle East, whether Baghdad or Basra, a better option than Wisconsin’s native air. A few veterans of Vietnam have returned to that region to live but not many.

Climate, while not a thing born to our bones, does eventually seem to become one. Even those low-down traitors who retreat annually to Florida, the Rio Grande, or Arizona troop back to the state come April with their tail between their legs. While I do not credit the universe with an eyeball consciousness consistent with the wrath of God, I am occasionally inclined to think the wild show-throttled weather of April is reserved solely for returning snow-birds, whether out of revenge or some other motive I’d rather not say.

I was in the Amazon one winter and the body adjustment to humid and back to Wisconsin was distinctly unnerving. When the northern boy met for the first time the tropic night as the door of the aircraft swung open to 95 percent humidity at 84 degrees at midnight, that was as cruel a thing as fishing with dynamite. Was twenty-eight below the morning I left Wisconsin. Then when I returned the clime of O’Hare airport assailed my senses with exquisite revenge, acclimatized as I was by then the same as Tarzan. For the next few days I froze to death, but then normalcy returned. I have never been to a de-tox hospital but to my mind climatic detoxification is a close second.

I have occasionally noted my reservations how our society uses air-conditioning, it is at the very least a costly disjuncture with climate, at worst a dysfunctional response. I read with some glee that more air conditioners sell above the Mason-Dixon Line than below it. The problem with air conditioning is both the out-of-pocket expense and its environmental cost. When energy costs in summer rival those of winter, it should suggest something is out of whack, or that we’re not allowing “our bones” to adapt. In the end we don’t allow our bodies to assimilate and gain a kind of climatic equilibrium. Our imposition of the mechanical polar zone during hot summer weather interrupts the physical systems our bones know how to handle.