Tip your head slightly to one side and it’s easy to hear the collective murmuring of the winter-weary and inconvenienced, oppressed to the gills with the plow and utility bills, frozen pipes, slippery walkways, salt laden cars, and spent batteries, obligatory commutes to boring, government schools, stressed workplaces or no workplace at all, and buckling marketplaces. Just for good measure add to this the multidimensional costs of our dependence upon imported food and the mind boggling risks caused by our continued dependence on oil and coal.
Then factor in the community impact of a host of garden variety post New Year psychosis’ manifesting as the blues, cabin fever, domestic melodrama, mysterious cold viruses, apocalyptic visions, and conspiracy theories all emerging like forced bulbs and bad poetry from chilly, carbohydrate chasing, light-starved hours amidst perpetual news of global economic collapse, criminal governance, environmental degradation, and expanding war, all with the special added touch of being right on the cusp of tax time. Besides that everything is fine.
But perhaps it is our mainstream culture and lifestyle more so than winter that makes winter so hard, and winter becomes a convenient scapegoat of sorts. After all winter certainly does bring some challenges and calls for adaptation. A full appreciation of winter has become less and less accessible due to the collective stresses and diversions imposed by modernity and its estrangement from nature. What then is at the heart of winter? What good is it?
Winter is not a malady any more than pregnancy is a disease. What we superimpose onto winter through lifestyle and perception can be. This alienation of affection for winter is achieved through marginalizing and displacing nature to such a profound extent that we can no longer discern or enjoy the distinct gifts of the seasons which are in fact a birthright. Our experience of winter is mediated by conditioned attitudes and priorities dictated by a denatured lifestyle that feels itself to be up against winter rather than with. Winter is viewed as an obstacle to be overcome. Winter is viewed with suspicion and even hostility as something to be survived and tolerated but not something to be fully embraced. Sadly, a barely tolerated winter is a compromised experience of winter.
My own appreciation of winter deepened when I lived for two and a half years in a tipi on the edge of a woodbacked meadow in Maine. I learned there that winter was less the primary source of my discontent than it was a beneficial catalyst for uncovering my discontent by providing less distraction and less escape from my feelings. Winter is by its intrinsic nature a productive time for quiet introspection that leads to a fruitful spring.
~Diana Newman
