Thursday, December 10, 2009

Still Cold

This is the longest and coldest cold spell that I can remember. It was -7 yesterday morning. Today right now it's +7, which is an improvement, but not a BIG improvement.

Last night I curled up and re-read for the twentieth time These Happy Golden Years, the final volume in the Little House series. Poor Laura, at age fifteen, is teaching school for the first time and boarding away from home for the first time in the miserable, slovenly, hostile shack of the Brewsters. Almanzo Wilder brings his matched horses, Prince and Lady, to drive her home every weekend, but one weekend he almost doesn't come, because it's so cold that the mercury in the thermometer froze when it reached forty below zero. But he does, and oh, the coldness of that twelve-mile ride across the bleak, bare, wind-scoured prairie, where Almanzo has to keep shaking Laura's shoulder so that she doesn't fall asleep and freeze to death.

Then finally, Laura is safely home again, and the cold snap ends. Almanzo takes Laura out sleigh riding on Sunday afternoon: "The wind was blowing, but not too hard, and everyone was so happy and gay because it was only twenty degrees below zero and the sun shone."

So I can be happy because it's seven ABOVE zero. And I think the sun is going to shine here today, too.

2 comments:

  1. It's cold here in Pennsylvania, too! 11 degrees this morning and windy. But the sun is shining! Thank you for reminding me about the wonderful Laura Ingalls Wilder book, These Happy Golden Years. Like to think of you reading it with Snickers curled up close by.

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  2. Oh. And the terrible moment with the knife. That's when you know how very happy and golden Laura's life has been made, don't you?, when you see that someone else is so dedicated to creating misery.

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