CHAPTER VII

LOOK AT THE WORLD!

“Give me to struggle with weather and wind;
  Give me to stride through the snow;
Give me the feel of the chill on my cheeks,
  And the glow and the glory within!”

March 17th.

The joy of winter:  the downright joy of winter!  I tramped to-day through miles of open, snow-clad country.  I slipped in the ruts of the roads or ploughed through the drifts in the fields with such a sense of adventure as I cannot describe.

Day before yesterday we had a heavy north wind with stinging gusts of snow.  Yesterday fell bright and cold with snow lying fine and crumbly like sugar.  To the east of the house where I shovelled a path the heaps are nearly as high as my shoulder....

This perfect morning a faint purplish haze is upon all the hills, with bright sunshine and still, cold air through which the chimney smoke rises straight upward.  Hungry crows flap across the fields, or with unaccustomed daring settle close in upon the manure heaps around the barns.  All the hillsides glisten and sparkle like cloth of gold, each glass knob on the telephone poles is like a resplendent jewel, and the long morning shadows of the trees lie blue upon the snow.  Horses’ feet crunch upon the road as the early farmers go by with milk for the creamery—­the frosty breath of each driver fluttering aside like a white scarf.  Through the still air ordinary voices cut sharply and clearly, and a laugh bounds out across the open country with a kind of superabundance of joy.  I see two men beating their arms as they follow their wood sled.  They are bantering one another noisily.  I see a man shovelling snow from his barn doors; as each shovelful rises and scatters, the sun catches it for an instant and it falls, a silvery shower. ...  I tramped to-day through miles of it:  and whether in broken roads or spotless fields, had great joy of it.  It was good to stride through opposing drifts and to catch the tingling air upon one’s face.  The spring is beautiful indeed, and one is happy at autumn, but of all the year no other mornings set the blood to racing like these; none gives a greater sense of youth, strength, or of the general goodness of the earth.

Give me the winter:  give me the winter!  Not all winter, but just winter enough, just what nature sends.

...Dry air in the throat so cold at first as to make one cough; and dry, sharp, tingling air in the nostrils; frost on beard and eyebrows; cheeks red and crusty, so that to wrinkle them hurts:  but all the body within aglow with warmth and health.  Twice the ordinary ozone in the air, so that one wishes to whistle or sing, and if the fingers grow chill, what are shoulders for but to beat them around!

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