A friend recommends the book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May just as spring bursts with flowers and I get set into motion after nearly a year of being in one place. In Southern Oregon, I’ve been wintered down, rooted in a little, and have become used to being still.
“Wintering brings about some of the most profound and insightful moments of our human experience, and wisdom resides in those who have wintered,” May says (page 16).
While I’ve been winterized and cozied in, my feet wearing a trail from upstairs to downstairs to outside and back in again, movement taken back and forth, patterns repeated, I’ve written the first draft of a novel, two short stories, read books, made neighborhood friends, worked, and done my best to stay warm. My wintering has been one of allowed creativity, of work and rest, of practicing contentment, of acknowledging discontentment.
May’s definition of wintering is much different from the winter I had, my ideal winter, or even the image I get when I think of winter. Winter brings to mind my time in the Wyoming wilderness where the snow was an invitation to ski and the brisk, crisp, high altitude air an invigorating thrill. In that context, when I have the proper apparel and don’t have to drive on ice or snow, I have a fondness for winter. I love the beautiful sterility of cold, the sweetness of dormancy. I love the deep sleep that comes with dark, darkest nights. I love the sharp outlines of stars and the swirling wisp of the Milky Way seen from a front porch in my slippers with the comfort of knowing that a warm fire is on the other side of that door.
In contrast, May says, “Wintering is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period of life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider” (page 14). Certainly, I’ve experienced those fallow periods where I wasn’t sure what would come next, what would happen, how I’d progress, how I’d ever manage to repair the wall of resilience that rejection had damaged, or when the world would open up to me again. Certainly, I’ve had those times. Certainly, the past fifteen months have had strong elements of May’s winter in them.
But winter, my winter, lets me move at a pace that works for me, lets me take advantage of long moments of quiet. I’ve gotten comfortable with winter.
It’s spring and summer that often make me feel I’m not doing enough, not moving quickly enough, not being productive enough, not being enough.
Even while I would happily take a wilderness winter now, still, the desire that’s always inside me (sometimes purposefully made latent) to find adventures, to travel, to experience, has sparked bright in the warming days. Has made me put out feelers into the open air like some long antennaed creature. Sensing, smelling, watching, listening, waiting.
Wanting and resisting change simultaneously.
When another friend calls to offer me a part time summer job opportunity, I know it’s the first push down the hill of the Next Thing. But it’s surprising how hard it seems to unstick my feet, to remember how to step my legs one after the other, and to take stock of what I’ve accumulated. How did all this stuff, these things get here? What does one person really need? I have to remember and remind myself that I know how to pack light and how to move on. I also have longsuffering parents who let me ship boxes filled with books, my now off-season clothes, and a fancy, nonstick pan to them so that I can collect individual items again when the time is right and when the season is right.
Winter, my kind of winter and May’s wintering as well, is a blessed time. But there’s also blessedness in spring and summer with all the blush, bloom, and activity. There’s an excitement with new opportunities when they finally come giftwrapped by the unknown.
Summer will bring its warmth, growth, and open arms. I’ll embrace it.
And when autumn comes, with its own transitions and changing colors, I’ll be glad to know winter is around the corner once again.
