Psychological Biomimicry — Hannah Frankel, LCSW

Summer used to be my favorite season. Although I am long past the age of school vacations, I still associate summer with that abrupt and delicious release. But as the season approached this year, it loomed as something ominous in a way it never had. For many of us in Texas, summer of 2023 was a period of estrangement from each other and from nature. So we all stayed inside, and I dreamed of creeks that had long since dried up.

This year my clients have been referring to Seasonal Affective Disorder with more frequency and alarm as we enter the hot season. However, I have an advantage in this. Back when I lived in New England, I had to work through the melancholy of winter. Katherine May’s beautiful book Wintering sums up much of my process, with its exhortation that we take the season for what it is in the natural world instead of trying to force post-industrial rhythms upon it.

Winter is not and should not be the bustling productivity of autumn, the lazy freedom of summer, or the energetic newness of spring. It is instead a season harder to square with our American cultural values and self-image. Despite this, it offers great gifts: the chance for reflection and repose, sometimes somber but preciously conducive to the wisdom that alchemizes out of grief and fallow periods. This year, I began to consider what a similar mindset would be for summer: how can I appreciate it for what it is, understanding myself as an earthbound organism like every other?

Observing nature for its ideas is not just poetry, it is paradigm. The term “biomimcry” was popularized by American scientist and author Janine Benyu in her 1997 book Biomimcry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. In this book Benyu argues we should look to nature as “Model, Measure, and Mentor” when solving human problems. Professionals in diverse fields such as engineering, architecture, and technology have turned to biomimicry for their designs, and now I’m seeing its application mental health. Re-stumbling across Benyu and her followers’ work recently, it occurred to me that perhaps this is the scaffolding I need to make my own plan to emotionally and spiritually survive the summer.

So I set out to learn this year, what do other flora and fauna of Central Texas nature do in times of extreme heat, and how can we apply these lessons to our own mental health?

1. Lazy isn’t always bad.

Denizens of hot weather climates are legendary for taking life slow. And for good reason: in the natural world overexerting oneself means dehydration or calorie deficit, which means death. Us humans living in the 21st century postindustrial world, however, struggle with “slowing”, “taking it easy”, and other such admonitions that conflict with our value on quantifiable productivity.

However, what I’ve learned is that summer time in Texas is not a season to make big moves or expect huge gains. People with school age kids travel in the summer of course, but more Texans are taking more out-of-state trips than ever before to get a break from the heat, which can make coordinating anything difficult. Of those who remain, many are covering for the work functions of vacationing colleagues or absorbed in additional family activities since their kids are home. Expecting to move projects or initiatives along in the summer is a recipe for frustration.

Many animals in Central Texas slow down for the summer. Throughout the season you probably will see few if any signs of animal life in the middle of the day. During these peak temperature hours most animals are napping under the shady cover of brush or burrow. At the more dramatic end of the spectrum are those animals who practice the summertime equivalent to hibernation, which is known as “estivation.”

To survive the summer earthworms will burrow down into the soil, knot themselves into a ball, and surround themselves with mucus to create a kind of self-contained cocoon. Credit to backyardnature.net

Estivating animals will go into a period of heavy prolonged sleep where their heart rate and metabolic functions slow to a near standstill. This suspended animation allows them the survival advantage of skipping the low food supply and and physical demands of summer, and then regaining consciousness when autumn’s relatively abundant supply of food sources returns. Estivation is a popular strategy for reptiles and amphibians in Texas, but also for many insects including earthworms, snails, and ladybugs.

However, just because it’s not a season to make big moves doesn’t mean it can’t be a fruitful time, with a different paradigm. The naturally slower pace and paring away of distractions means summer is the perfect time to do the background work that might support active initiatives in another season. For example, in the summer I find myself doing a lot of research and reading professional literature that I tap into my work during the rest of the year.

2. Get out in the mornings and nights.

Birdwatchers know that if you want to see anything much in the summer, you have to get out in the mornings. The crepuscular period, aka right around sunset, is second best. And if you want to see or hear amphibians or reptiles, you need to be out at night. But the middle of the day is a dead zone, during which you’d be lucky to hear anything other than the occasional whirring cicada.

It can take a reshuffling of energy to go places before and after the middle of the day, but it is so worth it. I invoke my old COVID rule: leave the house once a day. Ok, working from home and now having a young kid, sometimes it’s every other day. But for me and many of my clients, despite the temptation to stay home where all of our basic needs are met, the correlation is clear: I feel better about pretty much everything when I get out and feel myself to be part of the world beyond my four walls.

The joy of summer evenings is exemplified by Austin’s most famous wildlife inhabitants, the Congress Bridge colony of Mexican Freetail Bats. With up to 100,000 bats swarming out in a given evening, the Congress Street bats are the largest urban bat colony in the world. And while you can sometimes view the bat emergence as early as April, the time for seeing peak bat numbers is when the young pups are starting to join in the hunt in July and August.

I’ve got to tell you though, that as much as I love the bats, when it comes to summertime wildlife swarm viewing opportunities my true love will always be the purple martins. Purple martins are a migratory bird species whose flyways pass through Austin. The Purple Martin Parties are hosted by the Audubon Society and they are patently absurd affairs. Because the birds prefer wide open parking lots by the side of the highway, you basically end up sitting with a bunch of other eco-nerds behind an Applebee’s or an Outback Steakhouse or some BS like that. Set up your folding chairs, pop a beverage or pull out a snack, and tailgate for birds!

Purple martins have a long history of dwelling close to humans, starting with gourds hung by indigenous Americans to attract the birds, since they were beneficial in deterring other more destructive birds and insects. In turn the birds gained protection from predators who were afraid of humans. Unlike the bats who take off in the evening to hunt, the purple martins come back to roost as the sun sets. So instead of seeing bats pouring out, you will see masses of birds gathering in from around the sky. The birds form a frenzied rodeo that whips around the viewers as they gather with a climax of several minutes of fast circling of the parking lot and cacophonous chirping, until finally settling in for the night.

Maybe the second lesson from these two famous wildlife members is, don’t forget to see your friends!

3. Get in the water.

I’ve been trying out something new. Instead of my usual morning jog around the neighborhood, for a few days here and there I’ve switched to running on a creekside trail. Afterwards, in all my sweaty sticky glory, I jump in the creek and enjoy a quick dip before getting on with the day. Besides the obvious motivators of a) staying active and b) swimming is fun, this gives me a chance to celebrate a gift specific to the season. Your mileage may vary, but I personally am not going for a swim at 8 am in any other season than sweltering summer. Which makes the heat, oddly, something to appreciate.

Beyond the pure pleasure of the act, swimming is relaxing on a physiological level. In fact, one school of therapy known as Dialectical Behavioral Therapy teaches a coping strategy for dealing with intensely dysregulated states based on this. Because of a back-door hack in our biological system known as the mammalian dive reflex, dipping your face in cold water can help bring you down from intense emotional states. This reflex automatically conserves oxygen by slowing down a person’s heart rate and breathing, and generally regulating the organism towards a slower pace of activation.

During last year’s truly wretched heat streak, Texas Parks and Wildlife posted a video of a family of armadillos swimming at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge to keep cool. It turns out armadillos are adept swimmers and very comfortable in the water. Not only can they hold their breath for up to six minutes; they are also able to inflate their stomach to twice its usual size to serve as a flotation device. During extreme heat other usually terrestrial animals including opossums, raccoons, and coyotes have also been observed wading or swimming to keep cool.

4. Protect your boundaries to bear fruit.

Ahh, Texas: land of pokey things. And for good reason. In a dry environment like this one it behooves a plant to conserve water and to protect this resource from all the other creatures who covet it. Although Austin sits between the Hill Country and the Blackland Prairies ecoregions, which are nowhere near as dry as the southern and western regions of the state, it is still home to species that are masters of this dynamic such as the prolific prickly pear cactus.

While everything else is drying up, the prickly pear is flourishing. The flowers this year persisted into late June, and the fruit grows throughout the summer into the early fall. In an abrupt about-face, once the plant has fruited it banks on birds and other creatures to consume the prickly pears or tunas as they are known Spanish. As the barren summer environment offers little food and even less water, the tuna are a tantalizing treat.

Plants like the prickly pear with physical defenses such as thorns or spikes are known as “well-defended.” An equivalent translation for this in the human world might be “good boundaries.” As seasons change so do our needs and energy levels. What perhaps worked well a few months ago doesn’t feel so great, and it is incumbent on us to check in with ourselves, notice what those needs are, and show that we take them seriously by protecting them.

5. When all else fails, sploot.

Who could forget the splooting squirrels? There aren’t many things I can thank the summer of 2023 for, but allowing this beautiful piece of wildlife trivia and vocabulary to come to light is one.

For those who don’t remember or didn’t hear about it at the time, squirrels across the country last year were observed splooting in an apparent attempt to keep cool. Splooting itself is the act of spreading themselves out like a little squirrel pancake, with all legs splayed out to cover as much as possible, so that they can allow heat to radiate off of them and if on a cool surface like concrete in the shade, to absorb enough of its coolness as they can.

What is the human equivalent of splooting? Well, for one thing, I’d be a liar if I said I never stretched out all my arms and legs on a cool floor when I was totally spent. For another, sometimes you just have to say, this is all I got today.

As I get ready to publish this the summer of 2024 is well under way. The good news is, temperatures are marvelously milder than they were last year, and frequent rain has kept the landscape verdant and lively. There is yet another lesson in this: sometimes things do turn out better than expected. While it is prudent to prepare for what has happened before, and I do indeed find myself deploying the strategies above, I am also reveling in this wetter, cooler, significantly less sploot-y summer!