October Blizzard
It is late summer and early fall on the Ingalls
homestead. Pa hurries to get in his crop of hay
and the first year's harvest from the garden and
fields. One October morning, Laura wakes to find
that the temperature is near zero and there has
been a blizzard during the night. The blizzard
rages for three days, and following discussion
with other homesteaders and predictions of a
severe seven-month winter by an old Indian,
Pa moves the family to town - to his well-built
office building where they will be close to
stores, school, and other people.
Winter in Earnest
Once settled in De Smet, Laura and Carrie begin school, only to be caught by another blizzard during the day and barely able to make it home safely through the whirling, blinding snow. The trains stop running when blizzard after blizzard keeps work crews from clearing the tracks, and both fuel and food are in short supply. Even with neighbors close by, the Ingalls family is isolated and left to the mercy of the storms and their own ability to contrive and survive until spring. Finally, when most of the town is near starvation, Almanzo Wilder and Cap Garland make a daring trip to purchase wheat from a settler miles from town. Will it ever stop snowing?
There are a few surviving letters between
Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane dating
from 1937-1939, when Wilder was working on her
Hard Winter manuscript. In June 1939,
Wilder mailed her one hand-written copy of the
manuscript to Lane, saying that she only had notes
to go by if the manuscript was lost and she
had to reconstruct it. Laura and Almanzo were
about to leave for a trip to attend "Old Settlers'
Day" in De Smet, and Wilder wrote that Lane could
"finish it" (the book) if anything happened to the
Wilders on their trip.
