Issue 44 · Gathering

Things That Survive Winter

Survival is often pictured as remaining visibly unchanged under difficult conditions. Northern winters offer many counterexamples.

Some things withdraw. Some are buried. Some are moved indoors. Some lose every part we recognize and continue as root, bulb, seed, record, stored component, or practiced skill. Others stay in place and require repeated repair.

What follows is not a list of the toughest things. It is a list of methods.

1. Garlic: Begin Before Disappearing

Wisconsin Extension recommends planting garlic in late summer or fall, usually within a week or two after the first killing frost. The clove is placed several inches down, where it can establish roots before hard freeze without sending much growth above the soil.

Winter is not an interruption imposed after the plant has begun. The cold is part of the sequence. Many garlic varieties require a cold period to form good bulbs.

The planting depth matters. So does straw mulch, which moderates changes in soil temperature around the developing roots and shoots. The mulch does not make the bed warm. It makes the cold less erratic.

This survival method begins with timing, depth, and a covering that slows the argument between air and soil.

2. The Brick Building: Remain Available for Repair

An 1890s brick building survives winter differently.

It cannot retreat underground or be carried to a dry basement. Water reaches masonry. Cold finds gaps. Pipes, wiring, gutters, seals, drains, exterior metal, and roof edges continue aging. Freeze and thaw do not need a dramatic failure to matter. They can work by repetition.

The Steele Street building persists because people keep assigning labor and money to it. A former window is insulated and made into a bookshelf. A corroding gas line needs protective wrapping. Gutters and grading enter the repair list because water allowed to choose its own route will eventually write a more expensive plan.

Calling the building durable is accurate only if maintenance remains inside the definition. Old brick is not a spell. It is material that has lasted while many owners, workers, patches, and decisions carried it from one season to the next.

Its survival method is continuing access: leave enough of the building understandable and serviceable that the next repair can occur.

3. Woody Plants: Change State

Trees and shrubs do not simply stop.

Shortening days and changing temperatures contribute to dormancy and acclimation. Tissues alter in ways that increase cold tolerance. Buds wait. Stems and branches become dormant sooner than roots. The visible plant and the buried plant enter winter at different rates.

Soil is one of the protections. It cools more slowly than air. Snow and mulch add insulation, keeping root temperatures higher and reducing rapid freeze-thaw changes. Above ground, the same plant may face drying wind, ice weight, salt, and sudden temperature shifts.

One organism survives through several exposures at once. The branch and root do not receive the same winter, even while they belong to the same tree.

Its method is distributed: preparation in tissue, protection in place, and different tolerances assigned to different parts.

4. The Stored Production: Come Apart on Purpose

After the 2021 Krampusnacht production, steel pipe armatures, LED lighting rigs, foam forms, textile and fur elements, costume pieces, and shadow-puppet sets went into storage.

Their present condition is not documented. They require an audit before anyone can claim they are ready for another show.

This is a less graceful kind of dormancy. A performance that filled a room becomes components in boxes and racks. The creature loses its lighting. The stage loses its audience. A finished world returns to pipe, foam, wire, cloth, and labels.

Storage alone does not preserve a production. Someone has to remember what the pieces did, find them, inspect them, repair them, and know which can be reused. Photographs and records carry arrangements that the disassembled objects no longer show.

Its survival method is modularity plus memory. The pieces remain separate until people supply the relationships again.

5. Tender Bulbs: Leave the Ground

Some plants cannot be made winter-hardy by encouragement.

Cannas, dahlias, gladiolus, and other tender structures will not survive a Wisconsin winter outdoors. They must be dug, cleaned or cured as appropriate, stored under suitable conditions, and replanted after cold weather.

This is not failure to belong in the climate. It is a contract with a keeper. The plant survives because its underground storage organ becomes a stored household object for part of the year.

The method has costs. There must be indoor space, a stable enough temperature, labels, inspection, and a person who remembers what the dry object is. A forgotten tuber in an unmarked box has technically been sheltered and practically been lost.

Its survival method is removal from the field and continuity of identity.

6. A Seasonal Practice: Be Repeated by People

Krampusnacht happened at Yonder in 2019 and again in 2021. The productions were not identical. Costumes changed. The second event added Gryla, elemental spirits, tokens, and a different moral problem. Skills developed between the two runs and remain available for another one: shadow puppetry, foam sculpture, armatures, lighting, audience movement, food, timing, and the management of a room.

A seasonal practice survives through variation. If every detail must be preserved, the next version becomes reenactment. If nothing is retained, it becomes a new event borrowing an old name.

The durable part may be a smaller structure: people enter a temporary world, move through stations, receive objects or information whose use becomes clear later, and help determine the ending. Around that structure, materials, stories, prices, and working methods can change.

The practice also depends on relationships. Volunteers made the earlier events possible. Erin’s studio was affected. Audiences bought tickets and remembered the result. Another production requires those human conditions to be renegotiated, not assumed.

Its survival method is consent to assemble again.

Winter does not reveal one principle shared by plants, buildings, objects, and customs. Their mechanisms are too different for that.

Garlic needs cold. A tender bulb must escape it. A root depends on insulated soil while a branch takes the wind. A building remains in place because maintenance keeps arriving. A performance disappears almost completely and waits inside its parts.

The common fact is narrower. Continuity has a form, and the form has requirements. Before winter, someone or something must already have begun the work: roots established, tissues acclimated, straw laid down, water redirected, pieces labeled, skills retained, agreements made.

What survives is what can still meet those requirements when the surface changes.

Workshop Sources