The winter here is long and hard and cold, this winter is cold and long, but sometimes hard and sometimes not.

This week it has been hard, the ground is covered with ice and it is easy to fall. Whenever I write about falling – I fell a couple of days ago – I get a lot of messages telling me to get cleats or trac coverings for my shoes – those metal cleats to walk on the ice.

I am assured they work wonders, people even spell out the names for me

My first reaction is immature irritation – why do people think that someone who has lived up here for 15 years wouldn’t know about them? When I was young, people called me stupid and I suppose I am sensitive to that. My bad.

My second impulse is to smile. Cleat shoes are great perhaps for walking your dogs on icy streets in the suburbs or cities, they are not great for walking around a farm in the hard winter. The shoes instantly clog on mud, ice, and tenacious and ubiquitous and slippery manure. I have had some of my greatest falls wearing those metal attachments, they clog up nicely, and in extremely cold weather, they freeze instantly.

The problem up here is not smooth and slippery ice on flat ground, it is bitter cold in conjunction with mud mixed together with manure  and hay- and ice and rocks – on slopes and hills and uneven ground, a uniquely slippery and treacherous substance that is best-managed with heavy boots that have rigged bottoms. And also with walking sticks and vigilance.

If you are heavy – I am pretty big – this often gives some traction.

I have learned to walk slowly, to take heavy steps, look where I am going.

But let’s be honest. There is this idea out there that one can live on a farm and never fall. Several people messaged me after I reported falling on the ice and cautioned me not to ever go outside when there is ice. I think not…the animals would resent being starved to death, and then, of course there are the animal rights informers, forever looking for reasons to call the police.

I have learned to crawl well on my hands and knees  until I can get to a fence to hang onto.

I suppose this is the communication problem: it is absolutely impossible to live on a farm and not fall down.

Trac shoes will not prevent that. It is part of farm life.

Donkeys and horses can bump into you and send you flying without even trying.

Often you can’t see the danger. Under the snow and mud by February are thick slabs of frozen ground and ice.

You can’t see them. Newly fallen snow obscures them. The wind blows stuff in your eyes.  Trac shoes are a joke walking on them, they are as uncomfortable as they are useless.

Dogs can run into you, so can herded sheep, a 10-foot chunk of ice once slipped off a barn roof and landed on my head. I fell down, and quickly. I fell last week on a slippery vein of fresh manure, hidden nicely like a landmine under the snow.

I can’t count the times I have fallen on ice so slippery you simply cannot get up without crawling on your hands and knees, and even then you can’t get up. I’ve fallen on my head many times, been knocked out several, but only had to call 911 once, when I fell on my head and was so fuzzy I just couldn’t focus. It was late at night, and my mountain  almost instantly lit up with men on snowmobiles, in pick-up trucks, SUV’s and on ski’s. People up here live for this.

They whisked me into the house and poured brandy into me, nobody even thought of going to the hospital. We had a good time, they take pity on outlanders like me.

In the winter, they say, they pick up fallen people on farms every other day, more often in the hard winter. Nothing is free, and life on a farm is not, contrary to myth, a perfect life.

My history of falling changed when I started taking photos. I have learned how to twist when I am going down so that the camera lands on me, not under me. This is a much more effective safety program than cleats.

This is a remarkable athletic achievement for me, but I would not be taking photos if I had to buy a new camera every time I fell. So I’ve learned how to fall well and never smashed a camera doing it.

On my first farm, I counted on Rose to get me up, she would come and nip on my ears until I moved. I am happy to report that Fate is following in her shoes. Red does not move much when I fall, but Fate came rushing over the other day when I was flopping around the frozen yard like a flounder on the ice and could not get up. She stuck her head under me, showered me with lucks and tried to push me up, I swear it.

Dogs understand what people are slow to grasp. If you live on a farm, falling is a part of life.  I believe the donkeys laugh at me whenever I fall, struggling to get up in the smelly muck. Donkeys think human beings are ridiculous.

No shoe or cleat will spare me. I just have to learn how to do it gracefully.

So the bottom line is that I thank you for caring and trying to help. Generally, I know what I need to know, I promise, trac shoes were well known, even in the country. But I have learned to accept life sometimes, rather than make myself crazy by thinking I can control it. Not on a farm.