Field Notes from Wintering

I grew up as a professional student in a household of educators, never leaving formal schooling until my mid-twenties and constantly lamenting over what always felt like a short winter break with my family. When I grew up and out of the classroom, I continued my family’s legacy in education - working in school districts and education non-profits where life as I knew it - a seven to ten day winter break - would continue. It was never quite enough time to celebrate, and certainly never enough time to unwind. I often would return to work more exhausted than when I began my break. 

January 6, 1996 | Field Note from Wintering 

This is unbelievable! They say this is the most snow we’ve ever seen in Baltimore! I can’t wait for the snow to slow down so we can go outside. I hope we can use the Sauter’s driveway with our sleds.

The news says we’re going to get more time off from school! More days in PJs all day, movies, and annoying my sisters? Sign me up. So excited to hunker down longer with this winter storm!!!!

December 23, 2012 | Field Note from Wintering

I hope I can finish up this report so I can go hang out with friends. Ever since I moved from Cambridge to NYC, I’ve barely seen everyone from home. I thought winter breaks would feel longer once I left grad school - but somehow they are feeling shorter. I really need this break. The first couple of months being a newbie in NYC have been exhausting. The work is relentless. I hope I don’t return to work somehow more tired than when I began - but it is feeling likely with these deadlines and my need to refuel with friends and family.

December 1, 2022 | Field Note from Wintering

Winter break is happening in two weeks and my anxiety is rising from my shoulders closer to my ears. Last year’s winter rest break came easier. This time feels different. My to do list feels neverending. My emails are sneaking back into old habits - responding at all hours; forwarding emails within a few moments I was cc’d to the intended recipient with my recommendations on how to respond; relying on emails over calls and human connection. Moving with urgency over ease. No, I can’t possibly take off for three weeks this winter. If I can’t even fit my nature walks in anymore, how am I supposed to justify trying to fit in more time for rest and rejuvenation? No one tells you how hard years two and three are as a Founder. There’s too much to get done this winter. 

We live in a culture that creates, messages, and rewards the urgency to complete to do lists and move to the next. We are often taught to quickly move out of moments of discomfort. And it is not quite dissimilar to how we are often taught to treat winter - one that we hope is not too uncomfortably cold and moves quickly to warmer temperatures and constant sunshine. 

But what would happen to my beloved Ramble if we actually skipped the season of winter? If we kept moving from one extreme to the next? 

Without the days turning shorter and colder, the plants would not go dormant - an act of saving up energy for new growth. The fruit trees would produce fewer buds. Without snow cover, the ground absorbs four to six times more of the sun’s energy - further warming the planet. And so on. Nature needs winters to not only survive, but thrive. So do humans.

Like the park, humans are not meant nor built to move from one extreme to the next - and yet, for many of us, we do. And for Black women and people of color, this is in our generational DNA. Our generational DNA runs deep - reinforcing movement, urgency, and production. 

So what does it mean to embrace wintering as an essential act for our survival? Our imaginations? Our legacies? 

“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Wintering is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximizing scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.” - Katherine May, The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

In December 2020, like nearly every American, I was seemingly stuck at home. New York COVID-19 cases and deaths were climbing yet again and for the first time, we had loved ones in the hospital. It was my second holiday not home with my family back in Baltimore… ever. It was the first time a winter break did not have a time limit that was dictated to me. I was forced into a hibernation tunnel of sorts.

The days were cold and becoming increasingly monotonous. I was growing frustrated at myself - it was getting harder and harder to distract myself with my to do list. I found myself sitting in the liminal space - the in between space - of  discomfort and stillness. 

“Wintering is a metaphor for those phases in our life when we feel frozen out or unable to make the next step, and that that can come at any time, in any season, in any weather, that it has nothing to do with the physical cold.” - Katherine May, OnBeing Podcast

“It’s a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order. Doing these deeply unfashionable things — slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting — is a radical act now, but it’s essential.” - Katherine May, The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

See, I am well trained in the art of moving quickly out of discomfort. I am even better trained at completing an ambitious to do list with scarce resources and urgent timelines. But in this moment of forced wintering, my body and heart lingered in the painful discomfort. Over the last ten years, my winters have held both joy and grief. They’ve been marked by tremendous loss and the deaths of my modern ancestors: my father Quentin Wyatt, my amiga Jeanette Acosta, and the top biscotti maker Pete Holzknecht.  They’ve also been lifted up by laughter and quality time with my growing family in Baltimore, Maine and New York. In this moment of forced hibernation, I could not turn away from the juxtaposition of joy and grief. 

At the time, Katherine May’s writings gave me the words and the courage to be graceful with myself for the days I’d just look up at the sky in the Ramble and cry. Yes, I was missing my family and friends. But I was also realizing I was getting my house in order to launch a non-profit —something I never thought I would do, let alone in a global health pandemic. I cried for my courage. I cried for my fear of going out on my own and failing. I cried for the tenuous beauty of the life of the unknown as an entrepreneur. I cried longing for the voices of my Dad and Jeanette - for their advice, jokes, and laughter. I cried for not knowing what would be in store in 2021. 

It was during the winter of 2020 that I’d learn walking still in the Ramble on the colder and shorter days would be essential not only to my well-being, but to my dreaming and legacy building. Through December 2020, I’d continue to bundle up and walk the park. Some days along the perimeter again once the field hospital was built. Some days alone; other days with Jared. The only things that remained the same were my deep breaths, the cold on my cheeks, and the chirping of the sparrows. 

But inside, my body was preparing for growth. It was resetting in the quiet of the winter mornings and afternoons. Like the plants, I was turning inwards to listen to my gut, my intuition about what the future could hold. Eventually the resetting led to half and sometimes full thoughts and ideas. Pretty soon I would carry a little notebook with me to jot down ideas and images to make meaning of when I would return home. Many ideas were seemingly little prayers - “You will be ok.” “Your family will be safe and protected.” Several were just my infamous doodles. And then there were also a few that would eventually find their way to a business plan or a vision for seven generations from now. 

December 12, 2022 | Field Note from Wintering

I hear there is a visiting barred owl lingering in the park. I remember when I saw my first barred owl in December 2020 - Barry. The second Christmas away from my family. And I remember all the weeks that would follow of tracking her on Manhattan Bird Alert - running outside with Jared to find her at all hours of the day - no matter the day of the week. That owl was so majestic. She got all of us outside with curiosity and wonder in a time that was so grim in the city. I guess that’s not surprising - barred owls symbolize peace, protection, vision and intuition.

Intuition. My intuition says I should grab my binoculars and head out to see this visitor. My head says I have one week left until our rest break and an Instagram scroll of messages that say “finish the year strong.” 

Intuition. My intuition says I need this - I need the adventure into the park. I need to look up in the silence and search for this majestic owl. I need this seemingly radical but essential act of catching my breath again in the park against the cold winter air.

December 17, 2022 | Field Note from Wintering 

I saw the barred owl and her beautifully painted feathers every day this week. If you could see my face right now, I am beaming. There was a release when I first saw her on Monday. A release that probably has been building with pressure since the spring. Since April of this year, my practices began to slip - began to take a back seat to countless calls on my time. I’ve struggled to build the heart and confidence capacity to lessen the “We love what you’re doing, but you don’t quite fit in our strategy” rhetoric from funders. I have not celebrated large and small moments - I’ve just moved to the next set of to dos. I have forgotten what fundamentally opened my eyes and vision about nature - that we need seasons of rest, we need the season of winter. 

This winter break is needed, but honoring the full season of winter is essential for me. I cannot thrive, my team cannot thrive, my legacy cannot thrive, if I do not take the time, the patience, the stillness of this season to re-ground. This is my prayer for the season: to honor time. To honor patience. To honor stillness.

So, I ask again: what does it mean to embrace wintering as an essential act for our survival? Our imaginations? Our legacies?  I propose it looks like honoring the full season of this winter to find our grounding again - our presence, our balance in our bodies. The season is not a one or two week break from work - the season is three months. Honor it. Savor it as a season of deep introspection, of clearing, and - eventually - of creating. This month, don’t be rushed by the ending of office holiday vacations or the pressure from the scroll of social media to declare a list of resolutions for the new year. Silence your social feeds frequently. Walk into the fullness of winter: a time to explore how you found your presence in the past, where you might need to fortify your foundation, and what it looks and feels like to build a legacy where you are embodying grounding.  

December 15, 2022 | Field Note from Wintering

As a team today, we reflected on a series of questions by each quarter of 2022. I’m taking these questions with me into the winter season. (1) Foundation: What were the small and large wins? (2) Rebuild: What are the lessons to take into 2023? (3) Imagine: What’s on the other side five years from now? A generation from now? Seven generations from now? (4) Wintering: What do I need to put down or forgive myself for in order to settle into the stillness of winter?

December 21, 2022 | Field Note from Wintering

So it’s day five of the three week break. I just returned from walking around Jared’s childhood trails in Gorham, ME in deeply unfashionable wool socks that clashed with my fleece lined pants… and I could not have been more at home in my body. Beaming from the sun of the winter solstice. Head up, earphones off, bundled up. 

For the last two days I walked eight miles, refreshed from a soundless sleep as the winter stars quietly glistened off of the snow. The first night was hard to enter rest as the snow sat still and the noises of NYC were no more. But I eventually surrendered to the stillness. I’ve woken now two days in a row, nourished by the deep rest. Nourished by the foods my body told me to eat. Nourished by my walks through the snow. 

I used to be anxious about the return from this winter break, but right now I’m blissfully ignorant about the to do lists and pressure to plan resolutions. Right now I choose to stay surrounded by this feeling of presence. Of grounding in a trail of snow and whistling chickadees.

In still of grounding,

Gabrielle