De Smet SD Little Town on the Prairie

Happy dog on the prairie

    What a wonderful, happy day on the prairie!  Prairie flowers were everywhere, and there were fields of prairie grasses to run and play in! 

Prairie flowers

    We visited a shanty and a sod house, like the ones Laura and her family lived in.  We saw a slough (a depression in the prairie that fills with rainwater,) we met horses named Pet, Patty, Lady and Prince – just like in the books, we went to a one-room school like the one Laura went to, and we rode in a covered wagon.

Slough

School on the prairie

Covered wagon ride

 Cottonwood trees planted by Pa

    In the car we finished listening to The Long Winter. There were terrible, long blizzards for seven months in De Smet that year! It was bitter cold, there were fierce, howling winds and months of hardly any food.  After the storms there were periods of beauty.  Laura described, “The whole outdoors was dazzling, sparkling brightly in the bright sunshine. All the length of Main Street was a high drift of snow, a ridge taller than Laura” (Wilder 133).  We had a lot, lot, lot of snow this past winter at our home in Virginia.  For over 2 weeks we did not go anywhere, except to shovel. We ate almost all of the food in the house. When the sun came out it was beautiful and sparkling, but I could only play a little, because I got too cold.  It was a tiny little taste of the long winter in De Smet.

Dazzling, sparkling snow at our house

Me by a high drift