Frozen wood frog: I AM STILL NOT DEAD

This one goes out to all of you whose lives and livelihoods are stuck in suspended animation.  A message of solidarity from the Alaskan wood frog: stillness is not death.  Movement and busyness are not to be confused with living.  Hibernation is a strategy for survival.  Right now the pond is frozen, and the frogs are burrowed into the leaves and dirt in the woods around our house, frozen solid with their veins full of sugar to keep their cells from breaking.  We humans can’t pull off that physiological trick, but we’re an endlessly adaptive species, able to change our behavior on a massive scale to respond to a new threat.  All of us who can hold still should.  Sometime in late April or May the frogs here will thaw out and hop to the pond and start singing.  How well we humans hibernate now determines how many singing voices we’ll hear when we re-emerge.
 
I AM STILL NOT DEAD
Oil and acrylic on wood panel
12”x12”
March 2020