“Doing some fishing?” I asked. “Oh, we tried,” said the nice lady. “But we just have a small chisel and we couldn’t get through the ice.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” I commiserated, “but good on you for trying.” And with a wave, following the bouncy dog, off through the woods they went.Perhaps we will come back to them in a moment.

‘It can’t happen here’ were the ironic and iconic words penned by Sinclair Lewis as warning that authoritarianism and dictatorship, led by a charismatic populist or charlatan, could indeed happen here. Equally prescient were the words of our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln. He famously said, ‘If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.’

In the last election a great many of our fellow citizens thought it would be a good idea to elect a sociopath and insurrectionist/authoritarian as president. Enabled by a former political ‘party’ that had already supported and fomented that insurrection. Now the nation is reaping those fruits, and the path to the end of our democracy—Lincoln’s democracy—opens wide ahead, with its concomitant dictatorship. It ‘is happening,’ Mr. Lewis.

And here’s the thing. I can’t stop it. I write children’s books and essays about the outdoors from a cabin in the woods in Minnesota, and I can’t do much of anything to stop it. I often alternate between despair and fury, and that is no way to live. I have a dear wife battling cancer and I must be there for her, and cannot be if mired in despair. Or lost in anger.

You cannot stop it, either. I am greatly disappointed that pro-democracy folks with real power and large platforms, former presidents and vice presidents and corporate leaders and media executives and owners and well-known politicians and celebrities and newscasters and newspapers and judges and prosecutors and more, could not stop it. All who knew the dangers, and the stakes, and could not find a way—or the courage—to protect our nation, our democracy. And of course I am most disappointed with the galactically stupid and complacent who voted this abomination into power.

So what is my message? I don’t know. I am left with the words of the woman by the stream. ‘We tried but we just had a small chisel and we couldn’t get through.’ The stream itself is almost completely frozen over now. Just a few breaks in the snow and ice where you can barely hear the trickling current. I realize that I have only a very small chisel, too. Some words and thoughts, hardly strong enough to break through the engulfing deep freeze now upon us.

But I do hear—faintly —that gurgling current under the ice. Still free. Still moving. It will, experience tells me, break open in the spring. Will there be another spring for our democracy? Do enough people care, and can they summon the strength, to join and propel that current when the opportunities arise? So that none of us is left feeling alone, with just a chisel, too small for the job?

I don’t know. I admit, I’m not feeling very strong at the moment. But I still hope. And as I watched that bouncing dog, and the woman and the small boy, traipse off through the snowy woods, a bit discouraged perhaps but not defeated, I noticed the beauty of the scene. And was glad I could still appreciate it. And maybe, I thought, they will go and find a bigger chisel. And come back and try again.