In February
The first stirring of spring & our new Book Club pick
This month’s book club pick: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer • Find out more about my The Way Through Winter course • Check out my in-person retreats in March and July • Take out or renew an annual subscription this month to win a box of goodies, including copies of Braiding Sweetgrass and Drew Lanham’s Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves
Scroll down to learn about our True Stories Book Club read this month, Braiding Sweetgrass
February should be renamed February already. Where does January go each year? We complain about its endlessness, but when it’s gone, we have nothing to show for it.
Then February lands already, and the year seems to shift into gear. Today is Imbolc, the traditional first stirring of spring. Only six weeks ago, we were marking midwinter on the shortest day. Now the light is coming back, although this year it feels like the symbolic illumination has yet to arrive.
It has been a long, dark winter. I have a feeling it will be a long, dark year. We are going to walk through it, footstep by footstep, inch by inch. That’s pretty much all we can do. Imbolc is a time of potential, the trees in bud, catkins appearing on trees, the ewes pregnant with the next season’s lambs. Known as St Brigid’s Day in Ireland, it is also associated with cleansing, washing away the last remains of winter from our bodies and our houses, meeting the world anew. It’s a ritual that might help a lot of us this year.
February also brings Valentine’s Day, another cause for dread. I’m personally very glad to be past the phase in my life when I was supposed to attribute any meaning to this festival of romance. I am not a romantic soul. There’s nothing worse than landing in a restaurant on 14th February and finding yourself amid a tide of awkwardly overdressed couples, all trying to perform true love for public consumption. I will happily let it pass unnoticed.
It surprised me to learn, though, that V-Day isn’t an entirely recent tradition. Many scholars think that the first person to associate St Valentine with romance was Geoffrey Chaucer in his 14th-century poem Parliament of Foules. The premise is that on this day, Mother Nature gathers together several species of birds to choose their mates for the year.
And in a clearing on a hill of flowers
Was set this noble goddess, Nature;
Of branches were her halls and her bowers
Wrought according to her art and measure;
Nor was there any fowl she does engender
That was not seen there in her presence,
To hear her judgement, and give audience.
For this was on Saint Valentine’s day,
When every fowl comes there his mate to take,
Of every species that men know, I say,
And then so huge a crowd did they make,
That earth and sea, and tree, and every lake
Was so full, that there was scarcely space
For me to stand, so full was all the place.
(Translated from Middle English by A. S. Kline)
Love itself is dissected in this poem: the ways it can be true, the ways it can forge grand alliances, and the ways it can be undermined by lust. There is some competition among suitors for the female eagle, who declines all offers, and is allowed to consider her options for another year. But without the contemporary flood of cards and flowers, plushies and chocolates, St Valentine’s Day becomes quite an appealing prospect, a day to consider the nature of love itself:
The life so short, the craft so long to learn,
The assay so hard, so sharp the conquering,
The fearful joy that slips away in turn,
All this mean I by Love, that my feeling
Astonishes with its wondrous working
So fiercely that when I on love do think
I know not well whether I float or sink.
Perhaps I will celebrate after all.
What I’m loving this month:
The Lonely Island & Seth Myers podcast. I don’t watch Saturday Night Live, but I love this geeky, extremely detailed exploration of its writing process.
Blood oranges
Stews
The primroses that have appeared under my hedge
The art of Susanna Guerrero
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
Northern Farm by Henry Beston
This recipe for aubergine (okay, eggplant) borani
The Clary Lake B&B blueberry muffin recipe, as recommended by Felicity Cloake. Can confirm it’s easy and perfect.
Honestly, nothing much else. I’m so close to finishing my book that I’m barely coming up for air. I’m mainly subsisting on the blueberry muffins above.
February’s True Stories Book Club pick
First of all, thank you all for making last month’s jaunt with A Woman in the Polar Night such a roaring success. May every book club continue to be so much fun!
This month, we’re reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s modern classic, Braiding Sweetgrass. I’m curious to know how many of you have read it already - or have it on your shelves - and how many have been meaning to read it for ages?
Well, now’s the moment! Braiding Sweetgrass is a song to a more connected way of living, drawing on Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Potawatomi heritage and her expertise as a plant biologist. Combining the personal, the mythological, the botanical and the philosophical, Wall Kimmerer urges us toward living more reciprocally in an animate world. It’s a book that will stay with you for a long time.
It’s published by Penguin, and is widely available.
As Braiding Sweetgrass is a little longer, and divides itself into five clear sections, we’re not going to rush it and try to squeeze it all into a month. I also want to give you time to get hold of a copy! Here’s our reading schedule:
10th - 16th February: Planting Sweetgrass
17th - 23rd February: Tending Sweetgrass
24th February - 3rd March: Picking Sweetgrass
4th March - 9th March: Braiding Sweetgrass
10th March - 16th March: Burning Sweetgrass
Kaitlin Curtice, author of Native and Living Resistance, is going to join us on Tuesday 25th February for a mid-read live event.
I’m so looking forward to hearing your thoughts and impressions of this wonderful book!
Until then, take care, and I hope you are more romantically inclined than me!
Katherine
If you think a friend or loved one would enjoy The Clearing by Katherine May, gift subscriptions are available here | Website | Buy: Enchantment UK /US | Buy: Wintering UK / US | Buy: The Electricity of Every Living Thing UK / US
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Braiding Sweetgrass is a beautiful book! My copy is currently far away from me, so I will reread it another time, but I'll still enjoy following here.
About Valentine's day: in Finland, where I live, it is mainly celebrated as Friend's Day (Ystävänpäivä). There's still lots of heart imagery and I suppose people also celebrate romantic love, but the main focus is definitely on celebrating friendship (Finns, despite their reputation of being silent and closed off, truly value sincere and deep friendship). Somehow Friend's Day is more welcoming and less normative than Valentine's Day, so I like it a lot more.
I’ve read Braiding Sweetgrass and listened to the audiobook, narrated by Robin Wall Kimmerer. She has the most beautiful, calm voice and sometimes I go back and listen to her reading the opening section - Sky Woman Falling - as a kind of meditation. I’m so excited to hear what others think about this wonderful book.