We can create our own joy in the bleak winter months

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snowy leaves

“The color of springtime is in the flowers; the color of winter is in the imagination.”

— Terri Guillemets

While pushing through this long month of January, I am trying to find the beauty in it. Some days, as we all know, that can be mighty hard to do.

Atop our hill, all is quiet on our snow-covered farm. While returning after a quick trip for a few groceries yesterday, my husband pointed out all the many deer tracks in the snow, just before noticing buggy tracks in our snowy driveway.

As we reached the top of the hill, we saw our neighbor boy, Joe, in a horse-drawn buggy, and we stopped to talk to him. There were sleds in the back of the buggy, and Joe was all smiles. “I have a feeling school was fun today,” Doug said, and Joe’s smile lit up the day. “Yes, we did have fun today,” he said.

Seeing the sleds brought back happy memories for me. My sisters and cousins and neighbor kids would come to our place on snowy days. We had the best sledding hill, and we were happy to share it.

We would arrange to meet at our treehouse, and then we spent what seemed an agonizing hour dressing in as many layers as we could stand to wear and hunting up the sleds and saucers.

I couldn’t help but think of Joe’s two oldest sisters, now adults, who walked across our farm in our early years here. I enjoyed watching them take their time, stopping to explore something they had spotted in the fields between their home and ours.

The stark, gray days of winter have been brightened by the joyous smiles shared by our neighbors over the years. Two little girls dressed in black bonnets and capes grew up and have moved on, and now we enjoy their two youngest siblings.

I’ve learned we need to take a page from their joyous presence. When there is a bleak stretch, we should create our own sunshine. When the path is icy, try to find the fun in it. When the journey is long, take the time to notice all the little surprises along the way. Life truly is the joy of the journey.

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Judith Sutherland, born and raised on an Ohio family dairy farm, now lives on a 70-acre farm not far from the area where her father’s family settled in the 1850s. Appreciating the tranquility of rural life, Sutherland enjoys sharing a view of her world through writing. Other interests include teaching, reading, training dogs and raising puppies. She and her husband have two children, a son and a daughter, and three grandchildren.

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