:~:Christmas in the big woods.



{lovely flowers from a friend's wedding, a few years back}

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"Breakfast was eaten and the dishes washed and the beds made by lamplight. Pa packed his fiddle carefully in its box and put it in the big sled that was already waiting at the gate.

The air was cold and frosty and the light was gray, when Laura and Mary and Ma with Baby Carrie were tucked in snug and warm under the robes.
The horses shook their heads and pranced making the sleigh bells ring merrily, and they went on the road through the Big Woods to Grandpas.

The snow was damp and smooth in the road, so the sled slipped quickly over it, and the big trees seemed to be hurrying by on either side.

After awhile there was sunshine in the woods and the air sparkled. The long streaks of yellow, light lay between the shadows of the tree trunks, and the snow was colored faintly pink. All the shadows were thin and blue, and every little curve of snowdrifts and every little track in the snow had a shadow.

Pa showed Laura the tracks of the wild creatures in the snow at the sides of the road. The small, leaping tracks of cottontail rabbits, the tiny tracks of field mice, and the feather-stitching tracks of snowbirds. There were larger tracks, like dogs tracks, where foxes had run, and there were the tracks of a deer that had bounded away into the woods.

The air was growing warmer already and Pa said that the snow wouldn't last long.

It did not seem long until they were sweeping into the clearing at Grandpas house, all the sleigh bells jingling. Grandma came to the door and stood there smiling, calling to them to come in."

Comments

  1. ~ * Sigh * ~
    My sister lives in the woods of Maine and we have not visited in 13 years. The children would love to see her Little House In the Big Woods!

    I'm sure you have seen the quote by Thoreau:


    I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. --
    ~Henry David Thoreau
    Walden;  or, "Life in the Woods --Where I Lived, and What I Lived For"

    Your cozy spot brings more joy to our Advent season. My best to your mama and the entire family.

    Laura

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