Fuyugomori

A winter illness—whether the flu, the common cold, or some other ailment—compounds the season’s difficulties. Short as the daylight hours are, sleeping off a fever shortens them further. Scratchy eyes, runny nose, and hacking cough disturb the day’s routine, interrupt any long night’s sleep.

As we rest and recover, an old instinct grips us; we long like hedgehog or chipmunk to curl up and wait out the remainder of winter snug in a safe den. The Japanese have the word fuyugomori which translates roughly as the seclusion of winter or winter isolation, but I suppose the terms hibernation, winter blues, and snowbound would come close as well. No matter how we translate the word, it needs to include the sense of being cut-off from neighbors and friends and from the natural world.

“The dog pressed to the door
rattles it as he turns in sleep—
the seclusion of winter.”
– Buson, from Haiku Master Buson

Luckily, the recent go round with the flu is over. And today, for the first time in nearly a week, I broke free of the seclusion of winter for a short while, doing a couple of errands and going for a short but satisfying walk at a nearby nature area. It felt great to be let outdoors. Un-snowbound.

Posted on February 5, 2017 04:41 AM by scottking