February Updates
Wintering in New England and upcoming events
Hello, friends!
It’s felt properly wintery here in Worcester, MA this past month. In early January, you couldn’t drive past a pond without seeing pick-up hockey games and people gathered around holes in the ice with their fishing gear. The occasional snow storm has brightened the short, dark days of winter, quite literally, covering up the grim and muck and reflecting light so that I can take the dog in the yard at night without needing my headlamp. And, sure, it’s been cold, but there is something magical about winter. After a few years where our early spring bulbs started nudging up through the soil in January, it has felt good to have a real winter this year.
Not that winter is without its challenges. My husband and I live in an small, century-old house full of original features, including all 27 original double-hung windows, the sort with the ropes and pulleys and counterweights that rattle in their pockets when you open and close the windows. At some point, we think, insulation was blown in, but it has settled into dust by now. All of which is to say, our house is susceptible to draftiness.
We do what we can stop the gusts from creeping in, sealing windows with foam strips and special calking, closing the insulating accordion blinds and then pulling the insulated curtains shut tight across them, making most of the rooms into dark caves. The worst of the windows, during the worst cold snaps, get the extra special treatment of having layers of bubble wrap or blankets pressed up against them and held in place with tension rods. We stuff a towel up against the bottom of the front and side doors. We separate the living room from the sunroom—the draftiest of all the rooms with its 7 large windows—with a curtain, and we keep the wood stove burning, taking turns sitting on the floor in front of it. I bake a lot of bread, and we hunker down in our little cocoon of a house, cozy as can be.
Sometimes, when I’m trudging across the frozen yard to the woodshed and back, I feel like I’ve gone back in time. But for my synthetic winter apparel, I could be any pre-twentieth century New Englander, gathering fuel for a long, dark night, my breath in puffs before me, cold tingling my nose, the satisfying crunch of snow under foot, the comforting musicality of pieces of well-seasoned wood thunking against one another as I fill the log carrier, squirrels, bunnies, and birds scattering as I approach. At those moments, I feel connected to the seasons and to this place. I have stepped outside of time, not just outside of the year 2025, but outside the fast-paced crush of modern life. I have no choice but to move slowly, laden down with heavy log carriers and moving across treacherous icy ground, and I find I don’t want to hurry, anyway. I want to enjoy the late afternoon light on the snow, study the animal tracks to see who has been visiting, listen to the wind in the bare tree branches, and appreciate this moment because I know how quickly snow-white winter will turn to a muddy spring, another season to appreciate.
In the everyday flow of modern life, in our comfortable and climate-controlled environments, it is all too easy to miss the seasons as they pass. It is both a blessing and a curse of living in an old house that I can’t ignore the seasons. But as long as I can’t ignore winter, I may as well take it to heart, hunker down, use the literal season of winter for some metaphorical wintering, that is, slowing down and taking cues from this season where, unseen, under the snow and frozen surface, the world is renewing itself in preparation for spring.
A few years back, a writer called Katherine May published a book called Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. If you’re looking for some inspiration to help you embrace the benefits of hunkering down and finding comfort in winter, I recommend it!
News & Updates
Write with me this spring!
If you’d like to work with me on your writing in a supportive environment this spring, check out the Monadnock Pastoral Poetry Retreat, which will be held in Greenfield, New Hampshire, from April 25 to 27. While it’s called a poetry retreat, we also welcome novelists and nonfiction writers! I have been fortunate to work with fiction writers at this retreat for a number of years now, and every year it exceeds my expectations in terms of community, camaraderie, and inspiration.
Work on View
My painting , Red Apple Farm, painted last August on location at Red Apple Farm in Phillipston, MA will be on view the New England Watercolor Society in Plymouth from January 17 to March 5.
Learn watercolor with me!
This spring, I’ll be teaching a weekly Watercolor Fundamentals class through Two Bridges Art Academy. Classes will be held on Thursday nights from 6 to 9 PM from March 25 to May 16. They will take place live via Microsoft Teams, so you can participate from anywhere. If you want to try watercolor and level up your skills, check it out!
Why should you take my class when there are so many free tutorials online?
We’ll work through a carefully planned sequence of lessons designed to help you make quick and measurable progress. Instead of learning bits and pieces randomly from videos, I’ll guide you through a logical progression with exercises to grow your skills along the way.
You’ll be part of a community of learners who are all in a similar place in their watercolor journey.
You’ll get personal feedback, encouragement, and guidance throughout the course.
Our weekly meetings will give you a healthy deadline to ensure you keep practicing.
Each week, you’ll see a real-time demo, unlike most video tutorials that are sped up and create a false sense of pacing.
Want a little sample of what to expect? Check out this short video demo!