It was the dead of winter.

 The geese were long gone to southern lakes. Water here was nearly frozen over in the morning. The days were brief, and the sun made only rare appearances in a steely sky. Getting across the Great Plains and the mountains was the first test, and now they were in the middle of the second test: how to get through day after day of enforced solitude with only each other for company. Mary Ann made the sewing machine her father bought for her to keep humming as long as she had daylight to sew. She rose early to make apple pie, using the dried apple slices she had put up in the fall. She carefully measured out the precious cinnamon and sugar, to make it last through the winter.

Winter was a time to make and create. Mary Ann showed Mary Jane how to braid a rug out of scraps of material. Once it was finished, Mary Jane put it next to her bed, smiling with the satisfaction of having made something herself. James was busy in the evening also, mending the harnesses for the horses, oiling the reins and making safe their way of travel.

They all looked forward to the reading after dinner, when James would  open the big book of Pilgrim's Progress, and the closed in walls of the tiny cabin would melt away in the entrancing story of temptation, and help from God, and overcoming victory. They could all identify with Pilgrim, getting a victory over temptation, and then falling right into the devil's trap, through pride in winning. They knew the way of the Pilgrim, where one could be going along in an ordinary way on an ordinary day, and gradually find one's self in a pit of depression or self-pity. 

In a few months they would be able to work outdoors, in the garden, or visit neighbors and have a quilting bee. For now, it was a time of reflection, of making sure the inner person would be prepared as the outer person, furnished with fitting clothes and covered with humility and grace for adornments. They fed their spirits on God's Word, and they grew strong in the Lord. When troubles came, as troubles surely do, they would be ready Meanwhile, they were their own best entertainment. They sang hymns and folk songs, they made inventive little presents out of wood, or corn husks, or scraps left over from a dress. Mary Ann made a doll coat for Mary Jane's tiny doll, and Mary Jane spent hours taking it off and putting it back on her dolly. 

Coat for 8 " dolly, made by Hilda Nayha
Images by Leo Dauenhauer.