Winter Journal: A Season to Conclude:

The Winter...a Season to Conclude I think winter means different things to urban dwellers than it does to country dwellers—but also has convergent meanings for everyone. Perhaps though for Americans and our particularly overlapping holidays, fall and winter really stack the holidays, and many normal activities come to a stop or at least slow down to make room for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanza, whatever the religious observation is. But there is also Black Friday and shopping and year-end deals, and the promise of the new year with New Year's resolutions. Consider also that Winter probably meant different things in the past, before the computer and electronic age, before cell phones and television, before cross-country Interstate highways, and certainly before automobiles and radios. Winter is a time of contemplation, reflection, escape (from the frenzy of shopping) ...for me, that is. It is a season to conclude things and to plan for new things. Farmers shut down their fields, let them lay fallow. The harvest is done, but they are relaxing with a mug of coffee cupped with icy fingers between chores. They still must brave the cold to feed the animals and take care of things that have to be done, regardless of the season. But they also sit at the kitchen table and decide on the coming planting, perhaps shifting from one kind of crop to another, rotating their field, and otherwise envisioning their farm for the next year. Finally, maybe Winter is a time to dream and sleep, and hibernate, and read and write. But what is winter to you? This journal of lined pages for writing and blank pages for drawing and doodling can help you express yourself.