Snow

This non-fiction book might just be the most perfect thing to read right now, especially if you’re in a place where the weather is starting to cool and winter routines have started to sneak in.

The wintering – as a verb – which Katherine prescribes can be a balm for us all. We’re aware of changes that happen in the world around us during winter, but why do we plough through in a frenzy of overachieving and productivity, thinking that the laws of nature do not apply to us modern humans? She writes, ‘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 that they lived in the summer … Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs.’

The book is a memoir arranged from the Indian summer of September ending with an epilogue in March. As she marches, chapter by chapter, through the coldest northern hemisphere months, Katherine describes the necessity of storing for winter, the vitality (and perils) of being ‘in sauna’, the spookiness of Samhain, the wolfish hunger and dormouse dreams, and how supping on soup in the land of the reindeers made her cry. I loved how the revelations in her own life were richly supplemented by well-researched anecdotes, analysis and interviews. It’s the kind of non-fiction that leaves me enlightened and so warmly uplifted at the same time.

Katherine argues that not only is wintering natural, the misconception that we can ‘skip’ it is detrimental in the long run. ‘Doing those deeply unfashionable things – slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting – is a radical act now, but it is 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.’

I should add here that while Katherine employs snowy anecdotes to put her points across, you don’t only ‘winter’ (verb) with the weather. This act of slowing down and being still while recuperating and growing anew happens with certain life’s events, regardless of the time of year. It can be illness, loss, sadness. ‘If we won’t allow ourselves the fundamental honesty of our own sadness, then we miss an important cue to adapt. We seem to be living in an age when we’re bombarded with entreaties to be happy, but we’re suffering from an avalanche of depression. We’re urged to stop sweating the small stuff, yet we’re chronically anxious. I often wonder if these are just normal feelings that become monstrous when they’re denied.’

And the writing is beautiful. Prose upon prose of craft that I can curl up to for days. Many, many big, profound life-lessons-type phrases – the type you underline, twice – as well as my personal favourites, her delectable descriptions of a her cats changing coats in November, the robin’s cheering song, and this one of a sleeping dormouse: ‘a ball of yellow fur about the size of a walnut – round, compact, its tiny pink feet tucked into its belly, its ears pressed back and its black-tipped tail folded over its head as if to tie the whole arrangement in place.’

It’s definitely a gorgeous title to gift and to keep, or order two when you can 🙂

It was a happy coincidence that I chose Wintering as one of my core titles this month. I had initially planned to read – or re-read – a work of fiction. The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney, Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg, Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au were on my shortlist, and recommended for different flavours of reading.