I want to retain what the quiet reveals, the small voices whose whispers can be heard only when everything falls silent.

-Katherine May 

November 2nd. All souls night. It's an old Irish tradition.

It is believed that as the veil between the two worlds is at it's thinnest at this time of year. Those who have left us can come back for a brief visit on this night. Your energy and love for them is the path they follow. The Candle is the light that guides them to your home, and two small vessels one of salt and one of water, represent the essence of life. the salt and water also represent the meal you would have prepared for them when they were on this side. As they pass through your home, they can leave their love and blessings, and take away your troubles.

[Love Ireland]

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Samhain was considered to be the moment when the veil between this world and the otherworld  was it its thinnest.  Old gods had to be placated with gifts and sacrifice, and the trickery of fairies was an even greater risk than usual.  This was a liminal moment in the calendar, a time between two worlds, between two phases of the year, when worshippers were about to cross a boundary but hadn’t yet done so.  Samhain was a way of marking that ambiguous moment when you didn’t know who you were about to become, or what the future would hold.  It was a celebration of limbo.

~ Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.

Katherine May (Wintering)

on the merits of a private, messy, persistent notebook

I have definitely been there; the horrible ordeal of being exhausted after small activities and feeling like you need to explain yourself for just existing.

📖 Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May

This life I have made is too small. It doesn’t allow enough in: enough ideas, enough beliefs, enough encounters with the exuberant magic of existence. I have been so keen to deny it, to veer deliberately towards the rational, to cling solely to the experiences that are directly observable by others. Only now, when everything is taken away, can I see what a folly this is. I don’t want that life anymore. I want what [the] ancients had: to be able to talk to god. Not in a personal sense, to a distant figure who is unfathomably wise, but to have a direct encounter with the flow of things, a communication without words. I want to let something break in me, some dam that has been shoring up this shamefully atavistic sense of the magic behind all things, the tingle of intelligence that was always waiting for me when I came to tap in. I want to feel that raw, elemental awe that my ancestors felt, rather than my tame, explained modern version. I want to prise open the confines of my skull and let in a flood of light and air and mystery… I want to retain what the quiet reveals, the small voices whose whispers can be heard only when everything falls silent.

Katherine May

Psychedelic Renaissance

by Carts

“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through." 

~ Katherine May, Wintering

When I started feeling the drag of winter, I began to treat myself like a favored child: with kindness and love. I assumed my needs were reasonable and that my feelings were signals of something important.

Wintering by Katherine May

“"Talvitelat.” It doesn’t quite have an English equivalent, but it roughly translates as being stowed away for winter. “We used to use it when we put all the summer clothes away and got the winter ones out. It was always a good moment, to see them again. Like having new clothes twice a year.”

“Do you actually do it like that?” I say. “I mean, you don’t just throw on an extra jumper over your normal clothes?”

“No,” says Hanne, “you can’t do that in Finland. The winter arrives very suddenly, and you don’t mess with it. You need a completely different wardrobe; you can’t just make do." ...

Hanne is from Liminka, where the average temperature is 2°C. In July, it can soar towards 30°C, but nearly half the year is spent below zero, getting down to –10°C in January. You have to be ready for that sort of winter."

From Wintering by Katherine May

Sketch Book Reviews: Enchantment by Katherine May

Written and illustrated by Kateri Kramer

"For anyone who reads a lot, you've probably, at lease once, had an encounter with a book that happens at the exact time with the exact right book. One of the most memorable for me was WINTERING by Katherine May. I found it during the early days of the pandemic and it was exactly what I needed. This that bring me enchantment lately! Black-capped chickadees that come to my bird feeder..."

(Art: 'The Storm on the Sea of Galilee', 1633 by Rembrandt van Rijn)

* * * * *

Danger, when it is always imminent, does harm. It doesn't need to actually arrive. You exhaust yourself in the act of forever looking over your shoulder. Your body readies itself to fight and never quite discharges that chemical cocktail. You channel it instead into anger and self-pity and anxiety and hopelessness. You divert it into work. But really what you do, with every fibre of your being, is watch. You are incessantly, exhaustingly alert. You don't dare ever let up, just in case the danger takes advantage of your inattention. I've forgotten what it feels like to have space in my brain for anything other than watching. For a long time I kept working teaching, pitching articles, writing editorial reports and for a while, that felt like a life raft. But then, incrementally, it became impossible. I was aware of a fog descending, a seizing of the gears, but it seemed diffuse until now. 

~Katherine May (Book: Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age)

[Philo Thoughts]

Winter is a season that invites me to rest well and feel restored, when I am allowed to retreat and be quietly separate.

Wintering by Katherine May

A friend recommended this book to me and I’m only 14-pages in but I know this book has a place for me in its wisdom.

📖 Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May

Thank you, @the-forest-library !!

In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer makes a powerful case for a return to the indigenous understanding of the land, based on careful stewardship, deep knowledge, and reciprocity... One way to work towards this stewardship is to be skilled within our own landscape, to foster ways of tending to its needs as we meet our own. We are, I think, only too painfully aware of these lost skills. Native Americans are still living a history that saw these practices forcibly taken from them. My own community lost them through indifference. The small, precise gestures that make up a skill set seemed so ordinary until we let them slip away. But now that they are gone they are very hard to reclaim. They are part of a web of intuitions and abilities so fundamentally interconnected that relearning them will be a life's work. They range from being able to hold a paring knife correctly to learning to read the weather. From understanding properties of different types of wood to knowing how to preserve food. This is not just a matter of forgotten knowledge, but also a matter of desire. We have forgotten how to want one good dress over fifty disposable ones. We have forgotten how to crave each new food as it comes into season. We must learn to know with our hands rather than our heads.

- Katherine May, Enchantment

“The sea is a place we retreat to when our nerves need to be settled; it contains the memory of our wild, whole selves.” - The Electricity of Every Living Thing, Katherine May

Sea as therapy

Probably the cheapest there is for someone living in an ocean-facing state

Yet do I go to the sea when I need a nerve-settling dose of ocean sounds and smells and feels

The electrical, ion-resetting movement

Myself against the relentless coming-and-going of the tide on the shore

Breathing deep

Face turned towards the drowning sounds

Feet planted to receive its mighty offerings

Including the sand and the crusty saltwater on my sole

Yes, on my soul

It's one of the most important choices you'll ever make

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. If you don’t, then that skin will harden around you. It's one of the most important choices you'll ever make.

― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times (Riverhead Books, November 10, 2020) (via Make Believe Boutique)