The Pleasures of Winter’s Imprisonment

Dark mornings, house aglow

Winter is a quiet, contemplative time

I do think that readers and writers and poets like winter, that quiet contemplative season.  (However, I’ve noticed that painting and drawing are more of a challenge because of the lack of light.)  Writer Timothy Egan recently wrote an interesting blog post about just this theme of creativity in winter — you can read it here.

“I love the winter, with its imprisonment and its cold, for it compels the prisoner to try new fields and resources.  I love to have the river closed up for a season and a pause put to my boating, to be obliged to get my boat in.  I shall launch it again in the spring with so much more pleasure.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Journals,December 5, 1856

“Such is a winter eve.  Now for a merry fire, some old poet’s pages, or else serene philosophy, or even a healthy book of travels to last far into the night, eked out perhaps with the walnuts which we gathered in November.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Journals, December 9, 1856

Winter is the Best Time
by David Budbill, from While We’ve Still Got Feet

Winter is the best time
to find out who you are.

Quiet, contemplative time,
away from the rushing world,

cold time, dark time, holed-up,
pulled-in time and space

to see that inner landscape,
that place hidden and within.