Over the past several weeks I’ve been reading Wintering by Katherine May – a book that a close friend mentioned she was reading and found fascinating in our current climate.
Synopsis: A moving personal narrative shot through with lessons from literature, mythology, and the natural world, May’s story offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat. Illumination emerges from many sources: solstice celebrations and dormice hibernation, C.S. Lewis and Sylvia Plath, swimming in icy waters and sailing arctic seas. Ultimately, “Wintering” invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times. May models an active acceptance of sadness and finds nourishment in deep retreat, joy in the hushed beauty of winter, and encouragement in understanding life as cyclical, not linear. May forms a guiding philosophy for transforming the hardships that arise before the ushering in of a new season.
After reading the synopsis and discovering that the book was about “the power of rest and retreat in difficult times,” I knew I was interested.
For me, and I suspect for many others, this past year has been full to the brim of new experiences, sensations, and states of being (or, perhaps, not new, but prologued in a way we are generally unaccustomed to, as well as the onslaught of all of them occurring simultaneously): the surprising and unexpected, feeling regularly caught off guard, lengthy periods of unnerving transition, significant changes to nearly every aspect of life, timelines that are mere placeholders at best and change frequently, the inability to plan or stick to a plan because of regular said changes, general confusion or lack of information or rapidly changing information that one feels obligated to keep up with, news and media overwhelm, dismay or disappointment, missed opportunities, missed milestones, concern or worry and even fear for our health and the health and safety of our loved ones, months on end of “hurry up and wait,” frequent adjustments and the need to constantly exercise extra adaptive flexibility, a forced slowing down of the pace of life that we didn’t feel prepared for, learning how to think differently, altering perspective, shifting focus, general uneasiness, feeling adrift, loneliness, a deeper connection with nature, a strange relationship with time, emotional turmoil, social unrest, political frustrations, mental exhaustion, the waxing and waining of faith in humanity, a subtle nagging sensation of feeling like the world is off its axis but having no solution or tools with which to correct it, etc.
Not all of it has been bad, of course. I, personally (and I acknowledge that this is different for everyone), believe I have been fortunate to experience plenty of goodness and silver linings to balance out the struggle and unease over the past year. I have been nourished by the easy addition of long morning walks to my daily routine, sharpening skills and acquiring new ones in order to continue making my work…well, work, re-kindling long-neglected hobbies and enjoyments, more time at home with Ted, relishing in noticing the nature, animals, and intricacies of the changing seasons around our region in a way that I haven’t before, and the completion of projects I never thought we’d get around to. I have also been frustrated by lacking information and feeling very behind yet simultaneously not wanting to keep up because the news is not a great thing to be obsessed with these days, feeling very much fearful and anxious of the impact Covid could have on my loved ones if they contracted it, feeling deeply disconnected from certain aspects of my job that used to bring me joy but no longer exist in the same way in their current structure, struggling to make plans (something that I thrive on) when time is a slippery thing, and feeling generally mentally overwhelmed. I am lucky that, in the grand scheme of things, our problems are relatively small and more usually more existential than immediate or survival based.
Regardless of whether they are positive or negative, changes have been increasingly apparent lately, in ways big and small. Questions have been looping through my mind for the past several months like, “Why I am so tired when I make it a point to get plenty of sleep, exercise, and get outside daily, and I feel like I’m doing less than ever before? I need 10 hours of sleep every night just to function and do less than I usually do.” And, “Am I becoming complacent? What happened to my spark?” Or, “Why do I feel like XYZ? This is so unlike me. Will I ever feel like ‘me’ again?” And, “Are these new feelings and ways of living temporary or permanent? Is this who I am now?” And, “How much of this has to do with the simple fact of just growing older, or the pandemic, or the weather, or changes in the literal season, or changes in the seasons of my life?” I suspect the answers are a little bit of everything.
But this book provided me with a cozy sense of warmth, comfort, familiarity, and understanding – like an old friend who gets you or has weathered this before – and it helped me parse out some of the things I’d been puzzling and feeling, along with giving me different perspectives and methods to examine my wonderings by. Perhaps it’s because I read it in January and February – in the depths of winter when everything is silent and chilled, hushed and solemn, sleepy yet sparkling, and ripe for rest and recovery. Perhaps it’s because I read this book in the 10th and 11th months of this pandemic when my soul is somewhat flailing, just trying to keep up with everything new or different that has come its way in 2020 and is exhausted from constantly staying aware – ready to leap and cope with the next new change at any second.
In both cases, I have been experiencing the literal season of winter (which always feels pensive and like I’m leaning into hibernation in whatever small ways I can), along with the wintering of a transitional and complicated season of life where I’ve had to adjust and re-adjust and – even when things are going well – my body, mind, and spirit are still working to keep up with the ongoing relentlessness of it all. It seems I’ve been wintering in my own small ways since last March, but really feeling the full scope of wintering since actual winter set in around December.
I appreciated that May’s writing focused on the concept of wintering in the literal sense and season of the word, along with its historical significance and bare bones necessity, harking back to nordic traditions and the survival of humans, animals, plant life, etc. as they prepared for months in bitterly cold climates and with very little daylight. And how that same instinct carries through our DNA today, as people who live in all kinds of climates all across the globe, and even as we – as a society of individuals – actively fight against it and try to pretend that the need to winter, rest, and allow ourselves the time and space to recover from whatever ails us does not exist.
That’s the very American and European approach to life – keep plugging away, despite everything going on in the world and in your personal life and against all odds. Our society is designed to ignore our winters, and what winter originally was, and what it meant historically, and what its purpose is in the life cycle. We are taught from a young age to strive to cast aside the entire winter seasons of our lives, when we (and other species) are intended to focus on preparing ourselves for cold and darkness, and when we are meant to nourish ourselves, and to take time to rest and recover. And yet we desperately try to ignore both the literal and metaphorical change in seasons until it builds and builds and builds, and then it all – eventually – becomes too much for us. We try to operate, function, and exist the exact same way whether we’re on month 3 of 11 degree weather with only 5 hours of daylight, or week 2 of sunny, breezy, 70 degree days that stretch on seemingly into eternity bathed in daylight. Or struggling though a period of deep grief, general life difficulty or transition, or recovery, or happy as can be in a period of great prosperity. And we’re not programmed to work that way – to ignore the natural ebbs and flows of the seasons of nature or of life.
This book called out a lot of things for me to consider more thoughtfully, supplied a diverse smattering of information that was both interesting and helped illuminate the path toward eventual answers to questions I have been asking myself lately, and offered up a number of ideas to experiment with, along with a basis by which to generate my own ideas.
This is rarely the sort of book I feel drawn to, much less compelled to drop all my other books to read immediately (and I’m not sure why that is, considering how much I enjoyed it and how much I felt I benefited from reading it), but this book is one that I am certain I will return to on a semi-regular annual or so rotation. For me, it was one of those reads that offers up something new each time you read it and as you age and journey through different paths and seasons of life, you gain fresh insights, or they imprint on you in a different way. I found this first read of Wintering to be rewarding, fulfilling, and exactly the sort of thing I needed this winter and 11 months into an upheaval of life as we knew it. I also found it comforting and hopeful, and it inspired me to take action in the form of my own week of intentional wintering, which I’ll share more about in my next post.
