A Winter in the Dakotas (700L)
From my bedroom window, winter looks like a page colored with only a few pencils: blue for the sky, white for the fields, gray for the road. Most mornings begin with the scrape of Dad’s shovel and the soft hiss of the furnace. By the time I pull on boots, the air bites my cheeks and turns my breath into little clouds.
Our town gets quiet in winter, as if the snow covers sound. But there is still life everywhere. Deer cross the frozen creek at dusk, and pheasants burst from the ditches like flying paint. When the wind rises, it makes curls of snow roll across the highway. Mom calls them “snow snakes,” and we watch them slide and twist.
School goes on even in the cold. We line up our boots in the hallway and warm our hands on mugs of cocoa at lunch. After chores, I help scatter seed for the birds and listen to the feeder click with busy beaks. At night the stars feel close enough to touch. I fall asleep to the house’s quiet creaks, knowing that under the snow, the fields are only resting until spring.
A Winter in the Dakotas (950L)
Winter arrives here not with a single storm but with a slow tightening. The wind grows sharper, the light thins, and the land seems to trade its bright colors for a careful palette of whites and blues. From my bedroom, I watch the first skims of ice form on the stock tank and hear the morning furnace click awake. Dad’s shovel scrapes the steps in a steady rhythm, a sound I now measure time by almost as much as the school bell.
Out on the section line, the world narrows to what the weather allows. Some days the sky is so clear it rings—stars pricked into the dark like frost points, the moon reflecting off fields until the whole prairie looks faintly lit from beneath. Then the wind will come, turning loose snow into streamers that snake across the road. They slip and twist like quicksilver, hypnotic and dangerous. Mom calls when she leaves town so we can meet her at the top of the lane if the drifts have blown back in.
Life doesn’t stop; it simply changes its pace. We stack chores closest to daylight and warm our hands on the milk pail. I help spread seed at the feeder, and soon the yard ticks with motion: chickadees balancing like punctuation marks, a downy woodpecker testing the apple tree, a rabbit leaving its neat, paired prints. Deer cross the frozen creek at dusk, pausing so long they look carved from snow themselves. After supper, I set my math book under the lamp and work by the quiet metronome of the house—plumbing settling, the fridge motor, the wind’s low hum in the eaves.
Winter also rearranges the way I think about distance. In summer, a mile is a quick walk. In January, a hundred yards into the wind can feel like a decision. Yet the season gives back more than it takes: a sky so clear you could pour it into a jar; the way sound travels farther at night; the comfort of neighbors checking in, one pickup stopping to push another through a drift. When I finally switch off the lamp, I imagine the fields under their white quilt, not dead but resting, and I fall asleep to the idea that spring is already building in the dark—roots gripping deeper, seed waiting with patient certainty.