Winter in Nebraska (not to be confused with "Christmas in Nebraska" ;)

I'm teaching My Antonia in class this semester, so I was reading it over the break, and I came across this fantastic description of winter. And though I've already subjected several of you this passage, I thought I'd post it today for those of you who got away.

"Winter comes down savagely over a little town on the prairie. The wind that sweeps in from the open country strips away all the leafy screens that hide one yard from another in summer, and the houses seem to draw closer together. The roofs, that looked so far away across the green tree-tops, now stare you in the face, and they are so much uglier than when their angles were softened by vines and shrubs.

In the morning, when I was fighting my way to school against the wind, I couldn't see anything but the road in front of me; but in the late afternoon, when I was coming home, the town looked bleak and desolate to me. The pale, cold light of the winter sunset did not beautify--it was like the light of truth itself. When the smoky clouds hung low in the west and the red sun went down behind them, leaving a pink flush on the snowy roofs and the blue drifts, then the wind sprang up afresh, with a kind of bitter song, as if it said: `This is reality, whether you like it or not. All those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the living mask of green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was underneath. This is the truth.' It was as if we were being punished for loving the loveliness of summer."

--Willa Cather

It is as if, certainly. But that's not to say it is. And I think it was Shelley who said, "If winter comes, can spring be far behind?" The answer, I hope, for my Midwestern friends, is "Not too far."