Tag Archives: winter
We need quiet
“Others inspire us, information feeds us, practice improves our performance, but we need quiet time to figure things out, to emerge with new discoveries, to unearth original answers.” ― Ester Buchholz Of all the seasons, winter seems most linked with quiet; short days, long nights, the silence of snowfall and the calming blank canvas of …
A white quilt
“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.” ― Lewis Carroll Snow can seem brutal when we have to shovel it, …
Divine pleasures
“Surely everyone is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a wintry fireside; candles at four o’clock, warm hearthrugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without.” ― Thomas De Quincey Before Jeff’s surgery in November, when he was disappointed …
The diamond-frosted clasp
“December, the diamond-frosted clasp linking twelve jeweled months to yet another year.” — Phyllis Nicholson While most of us associate December with the holiday festivities, there is also the winding down of the calendar year, and a sense of wonder about how fast the months flew by, whether we were having fun or not. I …
Autumn asks
“Autumn asks that we prepare for the future —that we be wise in the ways of garnering and keeping. But it also asks that we learn to let go—to acknowledge the beauty of sparseness.” — Bonaro W. Overstreet Maybe autumn has such widespread appeal because it embodies the continual dilemma facing all of us, almost …
Bright and intense and beautiful
“Fall colors are funny. They’re so bright and intense and beautiful. It’s like nature is trying to fill you up with color, to saturate you so you can stockpile it before winter turns everything muted and dreary.” ― Siobhan Vivian That’s what I do on my walks; stockpile the colors and images and cool, smoke-scented …
Something is afoot
“It is a bright and chill early spring day. The air is crisp but the earth is insistent…The wind is stiff and needling. It still feels like winter, but spring itself is positive and determined. Something is afoot, and it is festive and uncontrollable and undeniable.” — Julia Cameron I’ve heard more than a little …
There will be times
“Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit.” — Anton Chekhov Even when the trees appear to be bare, there is a lot happening underground. A gardener once explained to me that fall is the best …
Firesides on winter evenings
“The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cozy parlor firesides on winter evenings, when one’s ramble was over and slippered feet were propped on the fender; of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of …
Permit yourself the luxury
“Winter is the time of promise because there is so little to do – or because you can now and then permit yourself the luxury of thinking so.” — Stanley Crawford Each year, I enter January with delusions about how much I will get done — I will clean out my closets, sort through old …
Excitement and peace
“It was the sort of storm that rarely happened…and the steady white flakes, the silence, filled him with a sense of excitement and peace. It was a moment when all the disparate shards of his life seemed to knit themselves together, every past sadness and disappointment, every anxious secret and uncertainty hidden now beneath the …
Singularly moved
I, singularly moved To love the lovely that are not beloved, Of all the seasons most Love winter. – Coventry Patmore If you read the comments section, you may recall that I mentioned this verse to Marlene when she said she loved winter. This is the post I told her I would write for her. …
A poet in January
“When one reads a poet in January, it is as lovely as when one goes to walk in June.” — Jean Paul Friedrich Richter If you’ve been reading this blog very long, you know how much I love walking, especially in mild weather. But I think Jean Paul was right about poetry and January, which …
Earth’s immeasurable surprise
“Lambs that learn to walk in snow When their bleating clouds the air Meet a vast unwelcome, know Nothing but a sunless glare. Newly stumbling to and fro All they find, outside the fold, Is a wretched width of cold. As they wait beside the ewe, Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies Hidden round them, …
On gray days
“On gray days, when it’s snowing or raining, I think you should be able to call up a judge and take an oath that you’ll just read a good book all day, and he’d allow you to stay home.” ― Bill Watterson In the winter it’s so easy to become gloomy and depressed. Not surprisingly, I’ve had …
Among these winters
Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were behind you, like the winter that has just gone by. For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter that only by wintering through it all will your heart survive. Be forever dead in Eurydice-more gladly arise into the seamless life proclaimed in your …
When it catches you
“The earth is covered…..and it is falling still in silence so deep that you can hear its silence. It is snow to be shoveled, to make driving even worse than usual, snow to be joked about and cursed at, but unless the child in you is entirely dead, it is snow, too, that can make …
The still ecstasy
“There is nothing in the world more beautiful than the forest clothed to its very hollows in snow. It is the still ecstasy of nature, wherein every spray, every blade of grass, every spire of reed, every intricacy of twig, is clad with radiance.” — William Sharp This isn’t the post I had scheduled for …
Bloom indoors
“I bloom indoors in winter like a forced forsythia; I come in to come out. At night I read and write, and things I have never understood become clear; I reap the harvest of the rest of the year’s planting.” – Annie Dillard One of the best things about being an adult at Christmas is …
In the slanted light
All the feathery grasses shine in the slanted light. It’s time to bring in the lawn chairs and wind chimes, time to draw the drapes against the wind, time to hunker down. Summer’s fruits are preserved in syrup, but nothing can stopper time. — from the poem “And Now it’s October” by Barbara Crooker Just when we …
Showing off
“I’m lying in my room listening to the birds outside. I used to think they sang because they were happy. But then I learned on a nature show they’re really showing off.” — Jo Knowles So much for our romantic anthropomorphism. But for a bird, maybe showing off is a cheerful sort of thing to …
Filling the dark trees
Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dark trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more than prettiness. ― Mary Oliver I saw more snow last week than I’ve seen any week since we lived in Ohio, and maybe more than any week ever in March. It was hard to think of …
Defeat Despair 