Terra Borealis
What exactly is Terra Borealis? It is obviously a place, first and foremost. And yet, secondarily it’s also a condition that generates a state of mind. Think of it as being akin to Purgatory rather than to Heaven when taken that way. If there’s snow and ice much of the year, and you’ve no choice but to build a fire, then you inhabit Terra Borealis. Either way, it is the land that I’m fit for.
While nothing is absolutely fixed with respect to defining the boundary of Terra Borealis as a place, given that the position of the Arctic Circle and the Tropic of Cancer vary as a function of Earth’s axial tilt, there is one factor and one alone that is a good objective measure. It is Pleistocene glaciation. If continental ice sheets once covered the ground in a particular location, then it lies within Terra Borealis. Scandinavia is an easy call. However, even much of modern day Germany meets the criterion, too.
On this side of the Atlantic, we know the boundary of Terra Borealis just by noting where lakes are naturally occurring, ubiquitous features. For the only lacustrine watercourses that are not the product of glaciation are oxbow lakes and those formed by earthquakes and meteor impacts, all of which are geographically few and far between. So, if lakes are common, naturally occurring features in your neck of the woods, then you live in Terra Borealis, the place.
It helps, though, to have other lines of evidence, too. And as it stands, several game fish species – such as lake trout, walleye, and northern pike – double as proxy measures of where the ice sheets were and where they weren’t. For example, when I was a teenager in Maryland in the 1980s reading Field and Stream, the first two seemed exotic and the last one mythical. The ‘Old Line State,’ in fact, was never under ice. So, of course, northern pike came off as something of legend.
Now, if Newfoundland and Labrador are akin to Scandinavia across the pond, then the Northeast of the United States, comprised of New York and New England, is akin to Great Britain north of the line stretching from Bristol Channel on the west coast to Hull Estuary on the east. For in its entirety – not just Estcourt in Maine at the tip-top, but even Ward’s Point on Staten Island, there at the bottom – is geologically northern. The basis is that the latter was the southern terminus of multiple continental ice sheets throughout the Pleistocene Epoch (c. 2.58 million to 11.7 thousand years BP).
In fact, much of the Northeast north of Middletown, Connecticut, and the Mohawk River in New York, and east of the Hudson River, is even more northern in character than you’d predict based on latitude and history of glaciation alone. Soils here tend to be spodosolic echoing Newfoundland, and weather is heavily influenced by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). When the NAO flips negative, the Northeast turns frigid.
But enough of Terra Borealis as a place and onto it being a condition like Purgatory. Where is, or where was, this glistening snowy and frozen wonderland? Well, addressing the first part is easy: I’m sitting on it. Of greater interest, though, in light of all that we hear today about climate change, is the second part. Because there was a time long before the Industrial Revolution when a preponderance of the floral and faunal assembly belonging to the New England–Acadian forest biome within which I live existed far to the south. During the Last Glacial Maximum, circa 20,000 years BP, it even reached the Gulf Coast. In fact, sugar maple for which Vermont is famous was holed up in east Texas near Houston and lingonberry grew in Georgia long ago like it does now in Husqvarna, Sweden where some of my people are from.[1]
All of it makes me think of Alabama, which I’m really not cut-out for other than to hunt bobwhite quail in mid-March when mud season starts in the Northeast. But imagine the Deep South as Yankeeland dotted with college towns. Although don’t fall for the tweedy image. Those college towns – each one is a little Purgatory. Nah, they’re more like little Hells frozen over with mean-spirited, nutty types – places where every other person has a stick up his gotta keep it clean, because Terra Borealis is a state of mind and heart where Jesus lives.
Article 1 Introduction
Article 2 New York
Article 3 Grandpa Jones and the Swedes
Article 4 Maryland
Article 5 The Best of Both Worlds
Postscript What’s in a name?
Fieldsports, Empire and Old Line Vignettes
Return to Joie de la Chasse: The Drawing Room
[1] Ray, N. and J. M. Adams. 2001 “A GIS-based Vegetation Map of the World at the Last Glacial Maximum (25,000-15,000 BP).” Internet Archeology, 11.