Reading Place: Last Gasp of Winter

This time of year, I’m always hoping for one last snowstorm or cold snap. I love winter, and am always sad to see it go. To give the season a proper goodbye, these links celebrate all things cold things cold and snowy:

At Brevity, Amy Butcher reflects on ice skating.

At The New York Review of Books, Ian Frazier reviews a new anthology of writing about the Arctic.

Did you know there is some debate as to whether or not bears actually hibernate in winter? Slate investigates—and also fills you in the sex lives of bears, in case you were wondering.

I live near a cruise ship terminal where the Queen Mary 2 docks, and so I’ve always been curious what it would be like to take it all the way to England. At the New York Times, book reviewer Dwight Garner describes a winter crossing.

Keith Gessen embarks on a considerably less luxurious wintry crossing when he travels with a bulk carrier ship on its journey from Murmansk, Russia, to China. The ship takes a northern route through the Arctic Circle—a route that has only recently been possible, as a result of global warming.

Finally, an elegy for snow.

 

Hannah Gersen is the Dispatches Editor of The Common.

 

From the beginning, The Common has brought you transportive writing and exciting new voices. We are committed to supporting writers and maintaining free, unrestricted access to our website, but we can’t do it without you. Become an integral part of our global community of readers and writers by donating today. No amount is too small. Thank you!

Reading Place: Last Gasp of Winter

Related Posts

Seeking a Mother in the Ruins

KRISTEN MILLARES YOUNG
A family does to its mothers what the centuries did to the Mother. What to do with a wound whose every available myth turned out to be serving someone else? I had to stop waiting for the woman in front of me to become what I needed her to represent.

cliffs

The Loneliest Island

KATY SIMPSON SMITH
Our silence felt happy and earned. We adventurers stared out over the red sand beach and over to the far cliffs and up the valley and all the way out across the unknowable sea. I imagined the Neolithic builders traveling here to read their fortunes in the sunset.

Poster for Mary Oliver's Documentary featuring her before a computer

Review of Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World

HANNAH GERSEN
One of the questions that this documentary successfully answers is: how was a talent as special as Oliver’s nurtured? How did it grow? I found it refreshing that Waters emphasizes the people and places that contributed to Oliver’s well-being and flourishing. There’s no feeling that her fame was inevitable, given her gifts.