Wisdom Below Zero
The first time through, I needed to know that all winters end. This time, I realized that I needed to learn how to weather the winters.
“Like the robin, sometimes we sing to show how strong we are, and we sometimes sing in hope of better times. We sing either way.” So ends the final chapter (not including the epilogue) of Katherine May’s “Wintering: the Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times.” It was a book that showed up everywhere last year, on book lists and blogs, Tweets and Instagram stories. I, myself, found it thanks to a friend in England sharing her thoughts on it via social media. I first read Wintering last March, when COVID anxiety was high and the isolation of difficult circumstances settled into my bones. Like so many readers, May’s honest descriptions of the trials in her life blended with the wisdom and peace she found in the natural world (among other sources) held me with rapt attention. Yet, when I think back to that time in my life, the specifics blur together, leaving me with a wash of different emotions which would take an entire post of their own to unpack. As a result, I can’t recall my exact thoughts on May’s book, only the emotional impression it left with me; peace and hope. Fast forward to January 2022; my internal life is about as different as the world itself is from March 2021. Despite the difference in my headspace, or perhaps due to it, this month I picked Wintering up again, curious as to what impression it would leave me with this time.
I wanted to dwell on May’s words this time. Every day (or, let’s be real, at times every few days) since the turn of the year, I read one or two chapters, with a journal in hand. As I read, I jotted down questions and inspiration that struck me from the passages. I thought about those questions, writing sometimes pages of reflections in response. I asked myself what ‘winter’ meant to me, especially as someone who grew up in a culture dominated by the length and ferocity of our winters. From there, I questioned what winters I was experiencing and how the North Country mindset of weathering the winter could help me weather these personal ones.
In her book, May points out the parallels between the physical winters we see in nature and the times of trial and hardship that are a part of life. She never belittles the pain of these “winters.” Their pain is real and obvious to May, but she points out how these times provide strength and wisdom. She encourages her readers not to rush the healing process, while, simultaneously, not to dwell on the pain longer than it deserves. It’s a love letter to the balance of life, to its summers and its winters, and the dance between the two. While my life looks wildly different from last March, there are still winters in my life, and once again, May’s words provided a salve to those secret struggles, the ones I keep close to my heart.
As life would have it, the weather couldn’t have provided a better time to reread this masterpiece. It feels like most of January has been below zero. At first, it was somewhat novel, reminding me of my childhood. Growing up on the border of New York State and Canada, I can remember several weeks of -20 degree weather every winter. My mom called it ‘nose hair cold,’ because everything, including your nose hairs, would freeze. The world has changed since my childhood, however, with each successive winter warmer than the last. Until now that is. Whether because of novelty or nostalgia, the first weekend the temperature took a dive, we embraced it. We ventured into isolated fields to photograph the way snow sparkles as only it does at 0, and drove through the Adirondack Mountians, embracing their cold beauty. The first workday of those frigid days, I abandoned business casual for the world’s biggest wool sweater, the kind of sweater that’s so large and chunky it barely fit under my coat. Yet, these weren’t one-and-done kind of days — they were the first of many. I began to run out of sweaters capable of keeping me warm at work and traded my sense of adventure for a desire to burrow under blankets. In short, I was physically and emotionally OVER winter. And it was still only January.
I read May’s words about the brutality of winter — both emotional winters and physical winters — as the wind blew against our windows, creating a windchill that plummeted temperatures still further below zero. (I believe one night we saw -40, thanks to the windchill.) I could see the reflection of my personal winters in the glass of those windows facing the cold. The aftermath of the tempests of the last two years peered back at me through the glass alongside my desire for our future family, just out of reach. I’ve spent my entire life growing sick of winter by mid-January, ready for the season of birth and new life, and at times, I’ve longed for those spring days so much that I’ve missed the beauty of the cold. In May’s words, I found myself reminded, and encouraged, that I can struggle with the pain of the cold while embracing the beauty in it too. That goes for these cold seasons just as much as for the internal struggle within my heart, as each month my husband and I hope for a successful cycle and the start of our family. We share so much hope and desire for that future, that it would be easy to forget the joys of the present. In many ways, this liminal space of our present while awaiting our future is an eternal February. There will be an end to winter; spring and the new life it brings will one day come, whether it will come earlier or later, though, is anyone’s guess. Yet, for all the uncertainty, joy remains.
According to my weather app, we are nearing the end of our time below zero. Or at least for the two weeks out that my app predicts. Winter, though, is far from over. I’ve walked away from my second time with Wintering a little wiser than I was the first time. That first time, I needed to know that all winters end. This time, I realized that I needed to learn how to weather the winters. I needed to find ways to embrace the cold, to look into tundra and to accept that both beauty and sorrow coexist. I walk away reminded that there will always be winters. Some will be harsh and brutal, and some will be mild. But there will always be winters. For me, there are the winters of trying to have a baby, which reduces every month to an emotional rollercoaster of hope, anxiety, disappointment, despair, and hope once more. There’s the winter of the pandemic that feels as though it will never end. Even as Wintering reminded me that there will always be winters, it reminded me that there is a past, present, and future. Just as there was a time before winter, there will be one after. Between the two, there is an aftermath of the storm. I’m still navigating the aftermath of some storms. And that’s okay.
“Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.”
