Reflections on Cabin Fever

Cabin Fever is real. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks checking it out. After nearly twenty months of pandemic isolations, you’d think this would be a rather mundane subject. However, there is no strain of cabin fever like that induced by the extreme cold of North Dakota. This unique variation has been endured by generations of those who dwell North of the continental divide in the American Midwest.

So let’s start there. Many people are unaware that there is such a thing as living north of a continental divide in America. Most of us are keenly aware of the eastern and western divides. Normally one encounters these geologic bifurcations at the top of some majestic mountain pass where a road sign triumphantly announces that you have crossed the continental divide and are now headed into an entirely new reality for the flow of water.

Crossing of the Midwest’s north-south continental divide is completely different. While tooling down what seems like an ordinary flat section of I29 a few miles north of Watertown, South Dakota, you encounter a road sign that shuffles its feet and drawls, “Aw shucks folks. It looks like you might have crossed a continental divide.” In fact, if you fail to notice this humble sign when traveling north, you could encounter river after river thinking they are part of the great Mississippi waterway when in fact, they have to find their way to the Atlantic Ocean under the ice in Hudson Bay.

You may be wondering what this topology lesson has to do with cabin fever. I would argue that it has everything to do with it, at least the way they do such things in North Dakota. Because there seems to be a dramatic shift in what cold truly means as you find your way north into the Red River drainage. Locals near Sisseton, South Dakota, where this nearly invisible continental divide happens, will tell you that the Bermuda Triangle has no greater claim on mysterious danger than their stretch of I29. Winter storms are particularly perilous, as you travel north into America’s drive-in freezer.

People north of the Midwest’s continental divide don’t even haul out the winter wear until the thermometer goes sub-zero. Because let’s face it, folks, North Dakota is cold. The land has been shaped by an ancient glacial ice sheet that covered a fair share of the North American continent making it so flat that one expects to see giant billiard balls rolling across the horizon. There is nothing to stop or even slow the press of a northern air mass stirred to 30 plus mile an hour winds, which creates temperatures that make zero degrees Fahrenheit seem like a distant summer dream.

So multiple times a year, North Dakotans expect the temperature to drop below zero, and then below -10, and then below -20 degrees. It usually bottoms out by -40, but who knows? And that’s without the fancy number-crunching meteorologists coming up with wind chill. More to the point, the temperature does not just drop down that low, it stays there. Not just for a day or two, but sometimes for a week or two. That is when sane people stay inside.

This brings us firmly to the subject of cabin fever. During much of our holiday time in Portland, North Dakota, we watched daily temperatures vainly reaching for highs above zero. Most of those days such attempts failed by multiple digits. We sat inside a lovely warm house and looked out our ice-framed windows at a crystalline landscape that would have been at home on Antarctica. It was beautiful, but one, maybe two days would have been totally satisfactory. As the count of days below zero resolutely marched toward double digits I could feel cabin fever starting to sink its claws into me.

So what does cabin fever feel like? People with casts for broken bones often speak of the maddening need to scratch some unreachable itch underneath the plaster. This is what cabin fever is like. With the cold pinning us inside for days, the itchiness just seemed to build up. There were contributing factors like three other adults, three children under age 11, a dog, two gerbils, and a tank of fish which made population density inside the house substantial. But I was on active alert to set aside normal domestic irritation. I love them all and was highly motivated to get along with everyone. Well, not the two gerbils. I could crab at Tator and Tot all I wanted because they took it so well.

I remember looking outside at the beautiful sunshine on the pure white snow. I thought to myself, “Wow, I could scratch this psychological itch by taking a walk outside.”

Then when I said, “Alexa, what is the temperature outside?”, an annoying device on the kitchen counter answered, “The temperature in Portland, North Dakota is minus twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit.”

I like Alexa less than I do gerbils.

My only refuge in my misery was a red overstuffed chair in the corner of the living room. After clearing out a stack of board books, four matchbox cars, a red stuffed dog, and a box of crayons, I entered my safe space. I think I lived in that chair for days, only arising to take sustenance, and well, er, dealing with the after-effects of taking sustenance. I tried scratching the cabin fever itch from that chair in a variety of ways. I surfed the net, but it only made me think of real surfing on a warm beach. I tried binge-watching movies, but the itch perverted my selection into soppy romantic comedies. And no matter how many permutations I watched about Christmas princes and princesses, the itch went unscratched. Then I binged some SciFi/Fantasy TV series. That just turned me into a grouchy film critic, and the itch still went unscratched.

Finally, on Sunday we unsealed the front airlock on the house and went to church. Sunday worship has always had a high value for our family, but I have to admit that escaping confinement mightily enhanced the experience. For a moment the itch seemed scratched. Praise the Lord! However, as we stepped out of the car, the icy wind started draining the life from my body. I reflexively checked to make sure I had remembered to put on pants. I’ve had too many dreams like that.

On Monday we made a SpaceX-like preparation to travel to Fargo for a stay in a hotel. We wanted to make sure we were close to the airport for our flight back to Georgia. As we traveled through the frigid, snow-covered flatness, I thought back over what I’d learned from my two-week bout of cabin fever. Mostly I have mastered the art of complaining about the temperature with great eloquence. But, then in a sobering moment, I suddenly realized that all of Canada is north of North Dakota. How do they do it? Maybe I should make arrangements to donate my red overstuffed chair to some needy Canadian charity.