Reviewed by Tara Lohan

“No summer is long enough to take away winter. Winter always comes,” writes Barry Lopez in an essay that is part of this wide-ranging collection.

In Winter more than 25 writers of varying backgrounds muse about the season. We read about people freezing to death while trying to get on their horses or find their homes in a blizzard; kids throwing snowballs at a passing car only to be chased by the driver; wolves splashing the red of deer on newly fallen snow; ice being harvested from frozen lakes for those in warmer climates; fish diving a hundred fathoms beneath the ocean’s surface; and people retreating inside tents and homes and themselves.

Schmidt and Felch’s collection, accompanied by the illustrations of Barry Moser, is divided into five parts: winter as a time of sorrow and barrenness; winter as a time to be scoured, and a time to succor the scoured; winter as a time of shoring ourselves up; winter as a time of purity and praise; and winter as a time of delight and play. The editors, both literature professors, provide one-page introductions to each writer’s selection and place the writer in the appropriate literary context.

The collection contains work by authors that range from theologians to naturalists and include writers such as Rachel Carson, Annie Dillard, Jamaica Kincaid, John Updike, and E.B. White. Despite the quality of writing in each piece, the collection becomes predictable. The writers stick to the primary idea that winter takes place only in the northern latitudes and only affects those living in wilderness or small towns. Winter could have more depth if it gave voice to cold urbanites as well, or even to those living further south than Virginia, where the season may also be a metaphor for something northerners have yet to imagine.