wrap your spirit around you

 

  

  

  

  

  

"How can you stand it?" I asked Dick as he was getting ready to go out to do the morning chores at the barn. Snow had fallen in the night. The sun was only a pink blob on the horizon like a smear of fruit on a plate that has been washed and ought to be clean.

"You jist take a look at that pile of clothes I put on when I go out," he answered, picking up a tall felt boot and knocking the chaff out of it. There was a hooded wool jacket, a quilted jacket, a cap with fur-lined ear muffs, a pair of denim overalls, the tall boots, and a piece of bailing twine to tie around the waist because, as his Uncle Howard taught him, 'It's equal to another jacket.'

I said, "Oh, I don't mean that. I mean this perpetual gray, this winterness going on forever..."

"It's all in the spirit," he said. "If you have some way to keep your spirit up..."

"Well, what's your way?"

"You look at the calves and think how nice they are...or the fields...or the mule colts. If you have something you like to think of you don't have to think, 'How can I set foot out in that cold snow?'" He put on one boot. "My feet haven't been really warm since last August," he admitted. Then he put on his other boot and wrapped his spirit around him and set his foot out in the cold snow.

Excerpt from 'Speak To The Earth; Pages from a Farmwife's Journal' by Rachel Peden

Wrap your spirits around you dear friends...it's still snowin'.

xo country girl