“Winter lies too long in country towns,” wrote the novelist Willa Cather, “hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. On the farm the weather was the great fact, and men’s affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice. But in Black Hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken and pinched, frozen down to the bare stalk.”

I thought of Willa Cather this morning, as Maria and I set out in – 23 temperatures to bring hay and water to our sluggish and stunned animals. They are hanging on, but all of their instincts are struggling with this winter, they cannot graze, move freely, step far from the Pole Barn, be warm, eat anything but the hay we give them twice a day.

I keep getting messages from our utility warming me that people with certain issues – age, heart, bronchial – should stay indoors in such cold, I refuse to accept that. Yet, for the first time I thought I needed to consider it.

Taking food to the animals, shoveling the walks, starting up the cards, filling the buckets and tubs with water, I felt my face burn, I felt a shortness of breath, my lungs hurt and so did the metal  bars the put into my chest last July to hold me together. It feels as if my chest has gone hollow.  It felt as if they were freezing, the bitter cold was reaching deep inside of me, an intrusion, an invasion. The weather is the great fact, we are all mostly just trying to survive it. My eyes teared in the cold, the drops froze to my glasses, my camera froze and the shutter would not work. I have twice had frostbite living upstate, and in such cold the fingers and toes scream for mercy. There is none in this winter.

I was exhausted, just a few minutes in the cold, I had to sit down. I will never give into the utility, it is not their business whether I go outside or what I can do, I detest the corporate pretense to caring about people when they do not. But it never occurred to me that they might be right before. Should I be outside? That is the thing about getting older, you fight every day to keep other people from defining you, but it is not easy to define yourself. I asked a friend, a farmer if I should be outside. “Nobody should be outside in this,” he said, “you look good, you’ll be fine.”

I’ll take that advice.

Maria’s fingers ached after a few minutes, we took the chickens’ frozen water – the heated bowl will not work now – and took it inside to thaw it out and replace it. They have just a few minutes to drink the fresh water before it freezes, and they know it, they hop right down. They have not been out of the roost in days.

When I take photos of Maria, in her colorful skirts and leggings, I think of Willa Cather, out in the plains, in the prairie, in her small town. I thought of her this morning, struggling to get through the snow, struggling from the cold.

In my town, the farmers shake their heads, they remember nothing like it, everything takes longer and is harder. We all feel for our poor animals, there is not we can do for them, they will have to hang on.

I miss Simon but am grateful he has been spared the worst of this winter. His poor legs would have left him in agony. Red has nowhere to run and today it was too cold for him to put his feet on the ground. The donkeys and sheep seem weary and dazed, not themselves, but hanging on, accepting and enduring. There are few pleasantries, no brushing or chatting or communicating. We can’t survive in the cold that long.

So Spring soon enough, I imagine. Winter lies too long in this town, weather is the great fact, here, human life is shrunken and pinched, frozen down to the bare stalk, covered in mountains of snow.