Enquiry #2: What Might Wintering Open Up For Ecological Organisations?

These enquiries are just for Cellular Rearranging’s paying subscribers. Alongside the longer form articles that I post every month or two that are crafted with care over many months, these enquiries are shorter, looser explorations of some of the enquiries that I’m currently holding.

I hope this series is a living invitation to join me in enquiry since shared enquiry is one of my favourite ways of being. It is also an experiment in bringing some of ecological enquiry, the shared enquiry process I’ve been developing over the last few years, onto paper.

---

Enquiry: What Might Wintering Open Up For Ecological Organisations?

Noticings: Reading Katherine May’s ‘Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times’ for the second time, I notice I’m finally settling into this northern hemisphere’s winter after spending autumn dreading its coming.

I notice good reasons for that dread: a rented house that is colder inside than out, exorbitant bills that mean our heating is like a distant cousin I only see every decade or so, and a flimsy favourite summer coat that I wear all year round. If I was a cat, I’d be hissing.

Yet, these last few days, I notice a subtle attunement to wintering. There is deep satisfaction in spending more time tucked up in bed, in cold winter walks, in steaming peppermint tea. There is deep satisfaction in completed work sent off into the world with a clear, gentle energy but hot much hype. There is deep satisfaction in time spent reading, pondering, grieving; in the stillness, in the isolation.

The idea of wintering as a way of being, as a practice, as a choice, opens up many fascinating enquiries for me, amongst them:

How is wintering different when we’re plunged into wintering through events beyond our control, and when wintering is something we choose to enter because the time is right?

How is wintering different when our wintering is mirrored in the season around us, and when it’s at odds?