Here’s a lovely word: aestivate. It’s what my garden snails did through the parched weeks of our summer drought, pulling their bodies high up into their shells and closing the door. Here’s another: epiphragm – the pearl-like door they make to keep moisture in as they slow their hearts and their breathing, until just a thread of life remains.
Pretty words, but such power in them. Over the summer I’d find these snails, dry and still, and hold them in my hands before tucking them back behind my garden pots. This is it, I’d think, the irony of our times: there’s us humans, all-powerful and cruelly dismissive of everything that is not us, hurtling towards changes in our climate that our bodies are entirely unequipped to deal with. And then here are snails, not invulnerable either, but with more forbearance than we could ever dream of.
