Winter’s Heart and Humanity: Literary and Culinary Reflections on the Cold Season

February 6, 2020

Winter graces us with a certain profound stillness, a season that shapes not just the land, but the very marrow of our spirit.

Victor Hugo, that great French poet and writer, beautifully captures the transformative power of laughter and hope in this chill season:

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.

And with equal warmth, he reminds us:

Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart.

Such words warm the gardener’s soul, who understands that beneath winter’s quiet surface lies an eternal creative spring.

John Burroughs likens the mental seasons to the physical, describing winter as the time of bone and sinew in literature, the intellectual rigor that prepares the tissues and blood of summer:

The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to Literature, summer the tissues and blood.

For those days when winter blues descend, chef Alexandra Guarnaschelli offers a comforting remedy easily imagined in the warmth of a gardener’s kitchen:

Winter blues are cured every time with a potato gratin paired with a roast chicken.

On a higher note, Reverend Roy Rolfe Gilson urges faith in unseen beauty and joy imprisoned in the “deepest dungeons” of duty, service, and sacrifice—the “old ogres and bugbears” we all face:

Keep your faith in beautiful things;
in the sun when it is hidden,
in the Spring when it is gone.
And then you will find that Duty and Service and Sacrifice—
all the old ogres and bugbears of —
have joy imprisoned in their deepest dungeons!
And it is for you to set them free —
the immortal joys that no one —
No living soul, or fate, or circumstance—
Can rob you of, once you have released them.

Richard Adams, author of Watership Down, wisely perceives that many claim to enjoy winter, but what they cherish is their “proof against it,” the resilience that guards the spirit:

Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it.

Finally, Burroughs offers a humbling reflection on life’s varied winter experiences—some in long sleep, some in distant travels, others in fierce struggle, and many in death—reminding gardeners and readers alike to appreciate the quiet courage winter demands:

To many forms of life of our northern lands, winter means a long sleep; to others, it means what it means to many fortunate human beings - travels in warm climes.

To still others, who again have their human prototypes, it means a struggle, more or less fierce, to keep soul and body together; while to many insect forms, it means death.

As gardeners know, winter’s dark and cold is but one chapter of the eternal story—one that readies heart and soil alike for the vibrant renewal to come.