So-Slow Book Club Week 1: Winter's Consolations

A look at what's revealed when the lushness of summer falls away

If you look west from my driveway in the summer, you won’t see much besides a busy road — once the main north-south route through my corner of Michigan before the bypass was built—and the trees that line it.

That’s all different in the winter, though. With the trees stripped bare of leaves, you can easily see beyond the old highway to a massive and ancient dune system beyond, and in the late afternoon, view lingering winter sunsets over Lake Michigan.

When my kids and I first moved to this neighborhood, a little house right around the corner from the home we now share with my husband Eric, it was February. Night after night after we moved in, I marveled at the sunset views out our front door.

It made me think of the line from Laura Ingalls Wilders’ The First Four Years, where Almanzo refers to an old proverb about the rich man getting his ice in the summer, while the poor man gets his in the winter.

A mile or so to the west, richer families than ours see show-stopping Lake Michigan sunsets year-round, but “Hey, we get our sunset views in the winter,” I joked to my kids.

I thought of those sunsets when I read the Week One of our book club selection, The Comfort of Crows. In this chapter, titled, “The Season of Sleeping”, Renkl shares her observations - the easy-to-identify birds, the visible contours of the earth - during this first week of winter.

“Only when I head outside do winter’s consolations become clear,” Renkl writes.

What a wonderful lens through which to view what we often perceive as loss during the winter months: loss of light, of warmth, of color…yes, all lacking for a time. But what do we gain when we can see clearly to, and through, the bare branches? What new beauty does the low and filtered sunlight reveal?

As we kick off the first week of our book club, I would love for us all to take a few minutes today observing nature - preferably from an up-close vantage point outdoors, if you can find the time and head out (if it’s as unseasonably warm in your region as it is here, surely cold can’t stop you!) - and see what nature is revealing to us this week.

What are “winter’s consolations” in your world? Share in the comments below, and let’s inspire each other to see what is gained in the space created by what’s missing.

For the next 52 weeks, we’ll be reading and discussing The Comfort of Crows, by Margaret Renkl, as part of a slow and leisurely book club. New posts are planned every Friday starting this week, and the first post of each month will be available free. To access exclusive content and support my work, please consider upgrading your membership. A note that costs will go up after 1/1, so this is a great time to lock in today’s price or switch to an annual membership if you are currently a monthly subscriber!