Book Review: Wintering - The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May

 

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

by Katherine May

I received this book as a gift but I admit it took me a while to give it a chance. I was expecting something a bit more self-help in style – do this and don’t do that, so it sat on my bookshelf. The title seemed to call to me this past week. “Wintering” sounded more restful. I took it upstairs to read before bed each night, and found a far more deep and meditative read than I anticipated.

There is a memoir aspect to the book as the author shares her own struggles with admirable honesty, and uses events in her life to illustrate her periods of wintering. However, there is a depth and breadth of topics from which she pulls examples and thoughts about wintering from that I did not anticipate.

In some ways, the book reminds me of The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey. (My thoughts on that book are here https://storymusing.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-sound-of-wild-snail-eating-by.html )

Both books start with the onset of a difficult period in the author’s life, illness and having to retreat from ordinary life in order to heal. Both books also share a great deal more in terms of information and ideas that were found through research and observation, not just their personal experience.

Wintering takes us from September through late March, from her husband’s appendicitis and her own illness through a visit to Iceland, interviews with her friend Hanne who grew up in Finland and another friend who had been in a coma as a young woman, ruminations on the origins and celebration of Halloween, how a dormouse winters, the Swedish veneration of Sankta Lucia, deciding to take her son Bert out of school, how she decided to become a mother, a trip to see the Aurora Borealis, walks on the seashore, a small survey of literature having to do with wintering, seasonal affective disorder, the way bees winter, and so much more. Each is a mini essay that relates to the larger theme.

Throughout it all there is a rich vein of humor and wonder. I laughed out loud at her take on the fable of the ants and the grasshopper, as her perception changes over time. She notes that grasshoppers don’t overwinter so the ants are actually denying the final wish of a dying creature when it asks for a bit of food.

“Whichever way you look at it, the ants are mean and sanctimonious, as well as possibly also genocidal.

But if I take my tongue back out of my cheek, it’s impossible not to taste the resonances of the ants’ stance.”

In the end, this is not really a self-help book, though it is very helpful. It is a thoughtful and illuminating meditation on the nature of winter and how we all go through difficult times where we need to retreat and rest, hopefully coming out the other side. It is the cycle of our lives. I would highly recommend this book.