Wind River Winter

by Virginia Stem Owens

To read the books of Virginia Stem Owens is to understand what Dylan Thomas once called ?the mystery of having been moved by words.? Her style is contemplative, ecstatic, tender ? always yearning for a purer vision of reality and grace. Wind River Winter is her account of watching the world die and be reborn in the desolate Wind River mountains of Wyoming. By attuning her mind to the enormous cadence of autumn and winter, she contemplates the balance of life and death?the world's and her own. Her writing, as beautiful as the best of Annie Dillard or John McPhee, will appeal to anyone who finds the power of language as awesome a power as nature itself. Virginia Stem Owens is the author of several books, including the critically acclaimed Feast of Families. She is a frequent contributor to the Reformed Journal and other publications. She lives near Huntsville, Texas.

220 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Brenda Funk · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second time I have read this book. The first time was years ago, for a book club. I liked it then, I loved it now. It is most beautifully written. Virginia Stem Owens has a gift with language that brings scenes to life. She and her husband, who is having a crisis in his vocation as a pastor, decide to retreat to the Wyoming wilderness, and spend the winter 'dying' as they reconsider their lives. It was lovely to read just as winter begins here, and to follow her in the progress of the season from fall, to Advent, to Lent to Easter and spring.
"I come here to the Wind River Mountains for the winter with David, my husband, who, like me, like all of us, is dying. Ten years after his ordination, his vocation is shriveling an drying. And there is no guarantee that, come spring, any new growth will appear. "What will I be when this winter is over?" he wonders aloud."
I loved the descriptive words as the author observes the dying of the world around them as winter sets in, and as she records the 'dying' of their 'selves' through the next hard months. It is however, a book that ends with the hope: "It takes a good deal of dying to get us ready to live. Sometime we simply refuse. We'd rather harbor what little life we have than die and scrape out a larger space for the Spirit."
"But dying is what our life here on earth is all about. Continually, daily, year after year."

[J. Michael Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a 35 year old memoir by a prolific writer, known for her powers of observation and turn of phrase. Without betraying too many personal factoids, Owens tells us that she (a teacher) and her husband (a pastor) have taken a six month sabbatical to Wyoming to learn how to die. Both are about 40 and have reached the end of the line, both for their careers, as well as for other aspects of their activity and identity. Their cabin is a little east of the Tetons.

Starting in September and going through March, we see the approach of winter, its deepening, and its yielding to the renewal of the earth in springtime. The winter and what it does to nature all around them becomes a metaphor and a teacher of death. As they attend a local church through this winter, we get an interesting juxtaposition of religion with real issues of life and death. Letters and messages from home, their changing relationships with their independent, young adult children, and their physical reactions to the winter all come into play in this memoir.

Owens is a marvelous writer, with uncanny observations and original twists of phrase, unafraid to plunge into mystery and confusion and hold up gems of wisdom. It is not an easy read, but a valuable and life-giving one.

[Joel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is essentially a meditation on death. Her husband had been struggling in the ministry, was burnt out, had lost a sense of his calling. Together they decided to spend the winter in the Wind River Mountains in Wyoming, pursuing solitude and pondering what Christ meant when he called Christians to take up their cross. As Bonhoeffer wrote, "When Christ calls a man He bids him come and die." Owens journals her thoughts in this book, her thoughts as she watches creation's death at the hands of the snow and ice, creatures' deaths around her in the world, and her own confusing call to death by Christ. Owens is on the editorial board for Books and Culture (an intellectual magazine that reviews and critiques books and media from an evangelical perspective).

I would never say that this is an easy read. It is Owens' journaling her thoughts on the death that she sees all around her. Sometimes her words struck me, sometimes they didn't. There were moments that I thought her stubborn focus went a bit too far, but there are many deep moments of beauty and truth. Instead of sitting down to read sections of it at a time I ended up reading bits of the book before I went to bed at night. I would read until I found something to think about, something I connected with, that would remind me that looking at death ultimately reminds us how to live. In her own words:

"To do my necessary dying, I would come back this place in the Wind River Mountains where the world still dies so thoroughly and wish such skill. If nothing else, I could learn the length of dying, its own capacious stretch through time and space. For death takes its own sweet time. It refuses to be rushed. I needed an apprenticeship, the daily practice, the careful observation of the pace of dying. Going to bed and getting up with winter, day in, day out. Grappling with cold, finding connections between the exchanges of energy we call death. Watching life abandon the land, observing the dereliction of creation. And maybe those mute lessons would seep slowly into the landscape of my own mind, so that I could learn to bear the abandonment of my own life. Maybe, watching the world die, I could learn to enter into that absolute still center at the heart of the universe, the death of Christ, where I could leave everything behind." (p. 16)

[Sharon Mensing · Rating 1 out of 5]

Since the back of the book says about Owens' writing, "Her writing, as beautiful as the best of Annie Dillard or John McPhee, will appeal to anyone who finds the power of language as awesome a power as nature itself," I was looking for something that brought the Wind River Valley to life as only a lover of the natural world can do.

Instead, I got, "But if death is only the enemy, how then do we dare speak of the necessity of death in our lives, of how we must die with Christ, be in fact baptized into his death? Why does the common table at the heart of our faith commemorate the very death of our Savior? Do we celebrate life or death when we consume body and blood?" (p. 13)

If you are interested in a religious tract set in Wyoming's Wind River Valley, then perhaps this book is for you. If you wanted a naturalist's experience in this location, as I did, this may not be the best choice.