WINTERING:
Luscious. I titled it in all caps. There is solace in the stilling of winter. Back behind the Salvation Army bells at store entrances and “sir-rishhhh” of tires in snow slush, there is organic permission to quiet, to go deep into moon-satined rivers deep within us, to curl up in the “tree-trunk” of our bodies, to touch ourselves, hold ourselves, to be animal, to be connected to the deeper rhythms, to relax into it . . .
Wintering: To “hear” what we see; to see what we taste . . . some kind of deep level synesthesia. Back to being "animal": alive, really, fully, with it--instead of just skimming it. I'm saying yes. I am giving myself permission to wallow in a year of soft gray and ivory, tawny tans, and deep shadow blues.
. . . a year of cozy, of comfort, of nurture, of restoration and recovery from "too long, too much". I am going to literally soak in other people's words. What a vacation to take long drinks of other peoples' thoughts, contemplations, and flights of watercolor art delivering the spell-bound images of the word magic scrawled on the pages and the wonder of reading out loud again, the magic of voicing what is written. I'm going to read myself bedtime stories. Seed my dreams, stretch in the cozy warmth of my own body heat, peeking at the soft-footed arrival of the gray day, over the rumple of my bed covers, with a milky sun peering back at me through my window.
Wintering: having time to pause, to contemplate, to gaze, to mull over, consider . . . has become such a luxury in our time. I'm claiming a year of it. I'll be working, still, but only 36 hrs, instead of 40 per week, starting the day after Christmas—16 hours more per month that is mine.
I have several journal-format magazines, one of them that I'm working with now, Field Guide to Everyday Magic by Stampington, and stacks of books, such as Wintering by Katherine May, gorgeous books—images and words by Jackie Morris about Snow Leopard; another about a Gypsy-woman who rides a polar bear pulling a vardo wagon full of books who comes by in the night and leaves a book for you . . . Jackie's book about unwinding.
This is the time of star boats that sail away into the rivers of stars. Then, there is the soothing of dark branches scratching the soft gray underbellies of the lowering clouds, pregnant with snow fluff, waiting to come down in soft flurries. I'm always amazed that our sensitive faces relish the nip of snowflakes, looking out from a ruff of fur. There is a quality to the voice in snow country that is a timbre like no other, held in a silence that you can hear. There is snowfall inside me, a stilling quiet, as those animal-self seeds slumber beneath the surface of winter white. 
