Winter

 

For more than a few years, we've had hardly any snow and certainly not a good snowstorm. That changed earlier this month when two storms arrived back to back. Finally, some real winter weather! 

In case you haven't guessed, I am a die-hard winter person. Neither cold nor wind deters me when winter weather arrives. 

However, it's been my experience there are more summer people than winter people. Die-hard summer people hate the cold, wind, ice and shoveling snow when a storm hits and leaves us with several inches of the lovely white stuff. 

The following came to me in a recent email from First Sip. It's a perfect explanation as to why I love winter. It also speaks to us during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic. It's from Katherine May and her timely memoir: Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times.

Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximizing scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that's where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but it's crucible.

Once we stop wishing it were summer, winter can be a glorious season in which the world takes on a sparse beauty and even the pavements sparkle. It's a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order.

Doing those deeply unfashionable things - slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting - is a radical act now, but it's essential. This is a crossroads we all know, a moment when you need to shed a skin. If you do, you'll expose all those painful nerve endings and feel so raw that you'll need to take care of yourself for a while. If you don't then that skin will harden around you.

It's one of the most important choices you'll ever make.

~ Katherine May

Namaste,
Chris