Nokota Horses in Winter

"Again, in the coldest midwinter weather, not a breath of wind may stir; and then the still, merciless, terrible cold that broods over the earth like the shadow of silent death seems even more dreadful in its gloomy rigor than is the lawless madness of the storms. All the land is like granite; the great rivers stand still in their beds, as if turned to frosted steel ...the snow-clad plains stretch out into dead and endless wastes of glimmering white." 

Theodore Roosevelt said that he would not have become the president of the United States if it wasn't for his time in North Dakota and as his quote above implies, life on the northern plains isn't always a gentle breeze through waving grass. While many of the prairie's critters hide under snow and earth, the ponies grow their coats long and huddle together for extra warmth.

Helen Obermeyer Simmons

Lunenburg, Massachusetts

January 28, 2015