I really want to know, but just can’t figure out, how to write like Katherine May. My wife and I read her book Wintering and now have added Enchantment. In many ways I seem to be like May; we may be different shades of neurodivergent, but I understand what she says. Indeed, at one point in Enchantment she talked me down from a writer’s dilemma that had me worked up for days. But I can’t write like her. I have times when my rhetoric for a blog post or two might come close, but I have tried to sustain it for an entire book, so far without success. My background was perhaps too sullied by academic writing, although May is also an academic, so I may simply be making excuses for lack of talent.
That’s too bad because Enchantment is meant to improve your outlook. Subtitled Awaking Wonder in an Anxious Age, it consists of life lessons the author learned during the pandemic. I often, if I allow myself in this constant struggle for my time, experience the sense of wonder May describes. I enjoy walking in the woods, watching heavenly bodies, staring into a river or pond, and trying to draw lessons from such things. Lately, however, I find myself rushing through them because I have something else I have to do. Daily, it’s the 9-2-5, of course. That schedule overloads my weekends with things that have to be done even if I want to spend time appreciating the enchantment I can find, if I have the time. Sorry, I’m letting the anxious part take center stage.
This is a wonderful book. I admire the way that May is able to face down her own struggles with grace and remain open to possibilities. I found such things much more readily when I was at Nashotah House. There were moments between classes and there were semester breaks. We lived in the woods. By a lake. There was wonder there, for the taking. Having a young child to introduce to the wonders of nature definitely helped as well. Children force you to see through new eyes (it’s not a surprise that May has a young son when writing). Too quickly we grow up and let capitalism tell us what to do. It takes so much from us and gives so little. I’m looking out my window at nature, as I write this. I know it has enchantment to offer. I also know that work begins in fifteen minutes.
