Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

Hibernation, the process in which animals sleep and retreat for winter, is a key motif in May’s novel. While this period of apparent stasis and recuperation during the harshest time of year is considered natural and even inevitable in the animal world, it is little-understood in the industrialized human sphere. By introducing the reader to a hibernating dormouse, May brings nuance to her discussion of this state. With the sleeping walnut-sized dormouse in her palm, May observes that it is “surprisingly cold, but also soft and slightly squishy,” and that “you couldn’t mistake it for dead. It is in the deepest of sleeps, drowsing until the summer” (90). The sensory contrast of a corpse-like cold with a lively softness is surprising and continues the book’s dominant idea that wintry coldness is a time of great vulnerability. That the dormouse is definitively asleep and not dead underscores May’s argument that vital processes occur in states of rest and recuperation. From Hazel Ryan, May learns that a dormouse’s hibernation patterns are tailored to the severity of the winter, as they ensure that the animal has accumulated enough body fat to survive and that it wakes up every ten days to bring its metabolism up to speed. The notion of hibernation as an adaptable state suggests an active, intelligent condition, rather than the passive uniform slumber that humans might imagine. It can thus be a metaphor for wintering, which must be adapted to the needs of the individual human and their crisis.

Just as with wintering, hibernation is a state that requires ample preparation. During the relatively temperate month of September, dormice begin to layer on fat, attempting to double their bodyweight. In the human realm, people from Nordic countries perform the equivalent of hibernation when they stock up their resources and undertake home repairs before winter, as they seek to make their homes the equivalent of a dormouse’s nest. When it comes to surviving metaphorical winters, May also shows that preparations are essential to survival. At the end of her memoir, she reveals that her book was written while she was beset with successive winterings; however, she was able to contend with doubt and depression and complete the book anyway because “I recognized winter. I saw it coming […] and looked it in the eye” (269). A practiced winterer, May treated herself like a hibernating dormouse, ensuring that her needs were met, especially with regard to food, sleep, and contact with the natural world. Like the dormouse, she did not deny winter but prepared herself for the changes. Thus, May shows that a state of flexible hibernation is valuable for humans too.