How To Winter Well
a poet's book review
“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through.”
From Wintering by Katherine May
I struggle with reading. Not the concept or the mechanics, but the attention and the level of weight I am willing to give any particular book, especially one I’ve never read before.
I am not what you would call a “voracious” reader, and I never have been. I read too fast and often skip whole paragraphs if I’m bored. I am picky, easily frustrated by works I don’t like, and would much rather re-read something I’ve read dozens of times before rather than something new.
Arguably, this pickiness is what makes me a good editor. But it also makes me a bit hard to please when I’m reading “just for fun”.
When I find a book I like, you can take that for the endorsement it is. Especially if it becomes a book I read again and again.
Wintering by Katherine May is one such book. In it, May recounts her evolving relationship with grief, pain, illness, and waiting, all through the lens of moving holistically through winter, both seasonal and internal.
It is a book that invites you not to speed-read, structured in parts named for the darker months of the year. You can almost treat it like a monthly devotional, if you’re so inclined.
May’s voice as an author is at once relatable yet authentic, and the way she describes herself and her journey is not always flattering. But that, I think, is what makes her so singularly qualified to take us on this walk through winter. She has lived through the cold, and not always gracefully. She wants to show us the best places to put our feet, and remind herself of the places she strayed from the path or froze with indecision.
But what May brings to this book and this tough subject is a sense of grounded poetry that I find irresistible. Early in the book, stuck at home on medical leave from her demanding job and feeling unmoored in every way, she describes making gingerbread men with her son:
“I make gingerbread men with Bert and find myself taking excessive care over them, as if they are reverse voodoo dolls. I imagine each one of them as a small act of defiance against the life I’ve been living. It’s a kind of sympathetic magic to handle something so pointless with such reverence: I am tending to the dead, gently laying to rest a set of values for which I no longer have any use.”
Wintering, page 22
Parts of this book are raw, unflinching, and difficult, but May doesn’t leave us there. She also gives us humor, gentle and steady. Her stories are human, and the conversations with her friends and family that she recounts are profoundly simple.
In May’s hands, the coldest months of our lives become crystalline and meaningful as long as we learn to stop and really see them for what they are. Wintering, truly, is an art form. And Katherine May is the perfect mentor to show us the craft.
As you might have guessed, I highly recommend reading Wintering for yourself. The audiobook version is also beautifully done. You can find Wintering in most places where good books are sold, but I suggest supporting your local indie bookstores wherever possible! Not sure where to go? Order Wintering from my own beloved indie spot, Third Place Books, here.
Thank you for reading!
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I loved Wintering