Do Good Design

In the winter of 1880, Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family lived on the frontier of the Dakota Territory, the only house for 60 miles.

The Christmas that she describes having as a girl of 12 in By the Shores of Silver Lake is full of little details, the pattern of fabric sewn up for an apron, the groove worn in the wooden floor — their first time living in a house with wood floors, not dirt, which Laura explains is harder on bare feet.

I’d never read it before this year, having only read Little House on the Prairie and of course watched the show in the 80s.

What’s wonderful about By the Shores of Silver Lake is Laura’s love, excitement and curiosity about everything around her.

Pa Wilder has moved the family here in order to be paymaster to the workmen laying down the railroad track and the story is about the family coming out first to make some money, then to be homesteaders and stake their claim of 160 acres of new territory.

What makes this a book to get me in the Christmas mood is the cosiness of their life, the sheer delight Laura takes in her surroundings, both outside and in their house.

Probably my favourite chapter is when Laura decides she simply must go outside to the big, frozen lake:

“There came a night when moonlight shone silver clear. The earth was endless white and the wind was still.

Beyond every window the white world stretched far away in the frosty glitter, and the sky was a curve of light. Laura could not settle down to anything. She didn’t want to play games. She hardly even heard the music of Pa’s fiddle. She did not want to dance, but she felt that she must move swiftly.

Suddenly she exclaimed, ‘Carrie! Let’s go slide on the ice!’

“Out of the warm house Laura and Carrie burst into the breath-taking air that tingled with cold. It was so beautiful that they hardly breathed. The great round moon hung in the sky and its radiance poured over the silvery world. Far, far away in every direction stretched motionless flatness, softly shining as if were made of soft light. In the midst lay the dark, smooth lake, and a glittering moonpath stretched across it.

“Laura’s heart swelled. She felt herself a part of a wide land, of the far deep sky and the brilliant moonlight. She wanted to fly. But Carrie was little and almost afraid, so she took hold of Carrie’s hand and said, ‘Let’s slide. Come on, run!’

“With hands clasped, they ran a little way. Then with right foot first they slid on the smooth ice much farther than they had run.

‘On the moonpath, Carrie! Let’s follow the moonpath,’ Laura cried.

And so they ran and slid, and ran and slid again, on the glittering moonpath into the light from the silver moon.”

The joys of ice skating! I haven’t done it in ages, but surely it’s even better on a lake out in the middle of miles and miles of wilderness.

The later chapters describe a happy Christmas together with another family, the excitement and anticipation of family members opening gifts that had been painstakingly made in secret.

By the Shores of Silver Lake makes a nice accompaniment to The Dark Is Rising, the quintessential English fantasy story alongside the quintessential American frontier story.

I’ll be reading this one next Christmas too.