Winter quarters

“ Here in our wild winter quarters, where we delight to dwell during a period of from three to four months, we find much to interest and amuse—much to do, for an equal amount of labor is rarely performed within the same time under any other circumstances, and I may add, too, with less fatigue or disrelish. With incident, romance, story, song, and adventure, time passes rapidly away. ”

“ While camped on the west side of the Loupe Fork a message from the apostles at Winter Quarters was received, advising that they proceed no farther westward that season, but to find a good place and establish a camp for the winter. They also advised that a council of twelve men be selected to direct the affairs of the camp, and suggested the names of twelve men to so act. The council was so organized, George Miller being president, and considerable exploring done to find a suitable place to winter, but without success. ”

“ Ditches and pools are fast skimming over, and a few slate-colored snowbirds with thick, shuffling twitter, and fine-chipping tree sparrows flit from bush to bush in the otherwise deserted pastures. This month taxes a walker's resources more than any other. For my part, I should sooner think of going into quarters in November than in winter. If you do feel any fire at this season out of doors, you may depend upon it, it is your own. It is but a short time these afternoons before the night cometh in which no man can walk. ”

“ The introduction of the team to winter quarters is always attended with more or less trouble: much less, however, of late than in former years. Then, all the chains and other implements connected with the business, together with provisions for the crew and provender for the oxen, enough to last until the swamps, rivers, and lakes were frozen, so as to allow teams to pass over them, were boated in the manner described in a former chapter, which required many trips, and were continued until a late period in the fall. ”

“ But, as I was saying, to change quarters here as late as November is a little difficult, for the wise ones seek to get housed for the winter by October: they select the sunny apartments, get on the double windows, and store up wood. The plants are tied up in the gardens, the fountains are covered over, and the inhabitants go about in furs and the heaviest winter clothing long before we should think of doing so at home. And they are wise: the snow comes early, and, besides, a cruel fog, cold as the grave and penetrating as remorse, comes down out of the near Tyrol. ”

“ You Tom, and Ed Parmly, are detailed to that work. Now as to shelter. Of course we've got to build a permanent winter quarters. But that will take several days—perhaps a week, and in the meantime we're likely to have snows or rains and we must have some sort of temporary abode. We must build that to-day. How shall it be done?"
"Easy enough," answered Harry Ridsdale. "We can set up some poles just under the cliff back there and make a shed open in front and covered with bushes so arranged as to shed the rain. ”

“ We often disturb them in penetrating the deep forests for timber. In such cases they always remove to some more sequestered place, and post themselves for winter quarters again, where we sometimes follow and take them when the condition of the snow renders their flight tardy and difficult. In the summer they roam at large through the forests and on the meadows, where they may often be seen feeding as we pass up the rivers ”

“ We are in the most comfortable quarters for winter we ever had and I hope we may not be called out again until warm weather comes. The weather is not cold, that is, water does not freeze, but we do, almost. There is a chill in the air at night that goes right through a blanket. ”

“ Lemuel Sapington, of Lancaster, Pa., a native of Maryland, formerly a slave-holder.—"The descriptions generally given of negro quarters are correct; the quarters are without floors, and not sufficient to keep off the inclemency of the weather; they are uncomfortable both in summer and winter."
Rev. John Rankin, a native of Tennessee.—"When they return to their miserable huts at night, they find not there the means of comfortable rest; but on the cold ground they must lie without covering, and shiver while they slumber." ”

“ In spring this ancient quarter decks itself with glorious apparel of white of cherry, pear and plum, with here and there the delicate pink of almond blossom; in winter, when the snow lies "smooth and crisp and even," the scene is changed into a fairy network as of delicate lace on a foundation of grey and purple; in all seasons it is beautiful. ”

“ The snow had somewhat abated; carriages and tradesmen's wagons were hurrying soundlessly to and fro in the winter twilight; boys in woolen mufflers were shoveling off the doorsteps; the avenue stages made fine spots of color against the white street. Here and there on the corners were stands, with whole flower gardens blooming under glass cases, against the sides of which the snowflakes stuck and melted; violets, roses, carnations, lilies of the valley—somehow vastly more lovely and alluring that they blossomed thus unnaturally in the snow. The Park itself was a wonderful stage winterpiece. ”

“ It is up in Northern Queensland that the "seasons" do their best,
But it's doubtful if you ever saw a season in the west,
There are years without an autumn or a winter or a spring,
There are broiling Junes -- and summers when it rains like anything. ”

“ Summer in the North is for Nature a time of expansion and of joy as it is elsewhere, but there is none of that opulence, that sudden splendor and superabundance, which mark it in the South. In these bare green valleys there is a sort of delicate austerity even in the summer; the memory of winter seems to be still lingering about these wind-swept fells, about the farm-houses, with their rough serviceable walls, of the same stone as the crags behind them, and the ravines in which the shrunken brooks trickle musically down through the débris of innumerable Decembers. ”

“ The next morning, when I threw back the shutters of our room, everything was white with snow; the old elms of the square, the street, the roofs of the mayoralty and market and church. Some of our neighbors, Recco the tinman, Spick the baker, and old Durand the mattress-maker, opened their doors and looked as if dazzled, while they exclaimed:
"He! Winter has come!"
Although we see it every year yet it is like a new existence. We breathe better out of doors, and within it is a pleasure to sit in the corner of the fireplace and smoke our pipes, while we watch the crackling of the red fire. ”

“ During cold weather, winterization of living quarters was carried out on a large scale, although men in the extreme forward positions usually had to improvise with a raincoat and a blanket in a foxhole. ”

“ In the splendid weather that so often welcomes the mere summer rambler in the upper dales the austerity of the widely scattered farms and villages may seem a little unaccountable; but a visit in January would quite remove this impression, though even in these lofty parts of England the worst winter snowstorm has, in quite recent years, been of trifling inconvenience. ”

“ So, by degrees, autumn faded imperceptibly into winter, winter into spring, and spring into summer. Each season in its turn found people dwelling peaceably in their urban habitations, entertaining and being entertained; and so "the Season" lost its sharp edges. The meeting of Parliament brought [72] no perceptible change in the aspect of the town. "High Midsummer Pomps" were no longer so "high" as in former years, but, per contra, there was much more gaiety in the autumn and winter and early spring. ”

“ The quarter has one broad thoroughfare or lung, which on a sunny day is gay, sightly, and alive; then to north and south diverge the innumerable low red-brick streets where the poor live and work; which have none, however, of the trim uniformity which belongs to the workers' quarters of the factory towns pure and simple. ”

“ In the winter whilst the summer residents were to be found again in the city, Nature herself made harder the lot of these squatters, by sealing the lake with thick ice, but they faced the bitter cold and frozen surroundings with stolid indifference. ”

“ It was impossible to think of the inn to which I was going, and hardly of the one which I had left. How could their fires have survived the all-pervading silent snow? When one is comfortable, near a fire or within reach of one, and in company, winter is thought of as a time of activity, of glowing faces, of elements despised, and even a poetry book brings back the spring: one will run, or eat chestnuts, or read a book, or look at a picture to-morrow, and so the winter flies. ”

“ While yet it is cold January, and snow and ice are thick and solid, the prudent landlord comes from the village to get ice to cool his summer drink; impressively, even pathetically wise, to foresee the heat and thirst of July now in January,—wearing a thick coat and mittens! when so many things are not provided for. It may be that he lays up no treasures in this world which will cool his summer drink in the next. ”

“ Beneath its level, how many sweet berries will be hanging next August!—This freezing weather I see the pumps dressed in mats and old clothes, or bundled up in straw. Fortunate he who has placed his cottage on the south side of some high hill or some dense wood, and not in the middle of the Great Fields where there is no hill nor tree to shelter it. There the winds have full sweep, and such a day as yesterday, the house is but a fence to stay the drifting snow. Such is the piercing wind, no man loiters between his house and barn. ”

“ Some carry masses of snow. Others have shaken their plumes free. The châlets are like fairy houses or toys; waist-deep in 113 stores of winter fuel, with their mellow tones of madder and umber relieved against the white, with the fantastic icicles and folds of snow depending from their eaves, or curled like coverlids from roof and window-sill, they are far more picturesque than in the summer. Colour, wherever it is found, whether in these cottages or in a block of serpentine by the roadside, or in the golden bulrush-blades by the lake shore, takes more than double value. ”

“ During summer, the people that can make it convenient retire to country houses in the neighbourhood of the town, and all public and private amusements cease; winter is the season for them, the Congress being then assembled, and trade not being so closely attended to, as the navigation of the river is then commonly impeded by ice. ”

“ Week after week sped by, summer ripened into fall, and fall faded into winter. All was monotony: the bleak winter season, the shorter days, the longer evenings, the city settling down into a period of seclusion and social inaction. There would be little of gayety this year. No foreign visitors would be entertained by the townsfolk. There would be no Mischienza to look forward to. ”

“ No, the winter has not yet come; but it is coming, for the muskrats are building. Let it come. Let the cold crawl stiff and gray across the meadow. Let the whirling snow curl like smoke about the pointed top of the little tepee down by the meadow ditch. Let the north wind do its worst. For what care the dwellers in that thick-walled lodge beneath the snow? Down under the water their doors are open; their roadways up the ditches as free as in the summer ”

“ The air is warm, the snow goes fast, and every thing seems to announce that the long winter is breaking up. The Main rises fast, and goes by the city like an arrow, whirling large masses of ice upon the banks. The hills around are coming out from under the snow, and the lilac-buds in the promenades begin to expand for the second time.
The Fair has now commenced in earnest, and it is a most singular and interesting sight. The open squares are filled with booths, leaving narrow streets between them, across which canvas is spread. ”

“ Thus, in the coldest nights of winter, when few boys could venture to sleep out, and one would suppose there would be a rush to these warmed and comfortable "Lodges," the attendance in some houses falls off. And in all, the best months are the spring and autumn rather than the winter or summer. Sometimes a single night of the week will show a remarkable increase of lodgers, though for what reason no one can divine. ”

“ The districts adapted for the growth of the distinctly temperate fruits are mostly situated in the Southern portion of the State, and at an elevation of from 2,000 to 3,000 feet above sea-level—districts having a warm summer but a comparatively cold winter, during which frosts are by no means uncommon, but where snow rarely falls; a healthy climate, with warm days and cool nights, to which many visitors go during the heat of summer, when the humidity of the coast is somewhat trying to persons not naturally robust. ”

“ In line with Roaring Bill's forecast, the weather cleared for a brief span, and then winter shut down in earnest. Successive falls of snow overlaid the earth with a three-foot covering, loose and feathery in the depths of the forest, piled in hard, undulating windrows in the scattered openings. Daily the cold increased, till a half-inch layer of frost stood on the cabin panes. ”

“ In February, 1934, we were snowbound for three days but lived in comfort, thanks to a minimum reserve supply and, by a happy coincidence, liberal marketing done the morning the storm began. Several neighbors took to snowshoes and skis and so made their way to the nearest store to replenish essentials like milk, meat, eggs and the like. Winter sports are a great institution, but trudging two miles for a quart of milk across a countryside waist deep in newly fallen snow is too great a mixture of business and pleasure. ”