Thoreau Thursdays (39): To Live Each Season As It Passes

“Live each season as it passes, breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

What is your special taste of the season?

What are those special influences of winter?  Can I befriend the cold and darkness instead of enduring or resigning myself to them?

When winter means rain instead of snow, I find it more difficult to evoke the cozy feeling of hibernating under a blanket of whiteness, the quiet calmness of a silent landscape, or the playful joy of an unexpected snow day.  I have to work harder at appreciating the gifts of this damp season.

But after a bit of thought, I compiled the following  Winter “To-Do” List to help me make the most of the next couple of months:

• Sleep late, and don’t feel guilty
• Splurge on a chai tea latte with soy
• Light candles
• Make kale chips
• Take a night walk
• Bake a gingerbread dessert
• Finish a hand-quilting project
• Plan a summer vacation
• Make soup from scratch
• Play a board game
• Learn to use my MP3 player and listen to some music

“We cannot wait for the weather to change before we begin to live.”
— Tim Farrington, A Hell of a Mercy:  A Meditation on Depression

“Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius.”
— Pietro Aretino, 1537

“I bloom indoors in the 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, Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek

“At Christmas I no more desire a rose than wish a snow in May’s newfangled mirth.”
— William Shakespeare