1. Prairie’s Winter Wonderland A visual presentation of a magical season

3. Prairie’s Winter Wonderland A visual presentation of a magical season

4. “Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.” -Albert Einstein “Cardinals” Mary Mullen

5. Ralph Tyksinski, finished shoveling, for now. There is neither heaven nor earth Only snow, Falling incessantly - Hashin

6. Ian (on snow shoes) taller than Barb, Lake Wisconsin, by Bob Park “It may happen that small differences in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the final phenomena.” -Henri Poincare

7. “Garage House” Mary Mullen “Out of the bosom of the air out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken, over the woodlands brown and bare, over the harvest-fields forsaken, silent, and soft, and slow descends the snow.” -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

8. “Snow Dragon” Peter, Lisa, and Iris. Photo by Galen Smith Green thoughts emerge from some deep source of stillness which the very fact of winter has released. - Mirabel Osler

9. “Queen Anne’s snowed” Mary Mullen “The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.” -Eden Phillpots

10. “Snow Duck” Madeline Long-Arnold The Fish The fish who lives within the stream has trouble when it snows. He sinks, resulting from the weight of snowflakes on his nose. While I sit by the fireplace and warm my little toes Far from the cold, and with a book contented, I repose. Rachel Long (written in high school)

11. “Bright Red Family” Mary Mullen Nature chose for a tool, not the earthquake or lightning to rend and split asunder, not the stormy torrent or eroding rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly falling through unnumbered centuries. - John Muir

12. Prairie sledding party at Elver Park “The question is not what you look at, but what you see.” -Henry David Thoreau

13. “Kites on Ice 2005” Galen Smith If there were no tribulation, there would be no rest; if there were no winter, there would be no summer. - St. John Chrysostom

14. “Female Cardinal” Mary Mullen Someone painted pictures on my Windowpane last night -- Willow trees with trailing boughs And flowers, frosty white, And lovely crystal butterflies; But when the morning sun Touched them with its golden beams, They vanished one by one. - Helen Bayley Davis, Jack Frost

15. I'm particularly fond of this photo of Emma, Caleb, and Kristin. I took the photo on our spring break ski trip in the Northwoods this year. A wonderful, sunny, warmish day on snow in the quiet woods near Mercer. We had a wonderful lunch break at a little log cabin warming hut overlooking a beautiful stream... Great family memories. Photo by Andy Swartz

16. “Morning Light” Dorothy Krause If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant. - Anne Bradstreet

17. “Mail Boxes” Mary Mullen There are two seasonal diversions that can ease the bite of any winter. One is the January thaw. The other is the seed catalogues. - Hal Borland

18. “Winter Swamp” Colin Bosch “The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.” -Sir Francis Bacon

19. Eskimo Child, Fairbanks Winter Carnival, March 1953 Photo by Galen Smith The north wind doth blow, And we shall have snow, And what will the dormouse do then, Poor thing? Roll'd up like a ball, In his nest snug and small, He'll sleep till warm weather comes in, Poor thing. - Traditional ballad, The North Wind Doth Blow

20. “Cooper’s Eyes” Mary Mullen Keep your faith in beautiful things; in the sun when it is hidden, in the Spring when it is gone. - Roy R. Gibson

21. Ian and snow bunny at Lake Wisconsin, by Bob Park “One cannot fix one’s eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy.” -Jane Austen

22. “Wren House” Mary Mullen “How full of the creative genius is the air in which these are generated! I should hardly admire more if the real stars fell and lodged on my coat. Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.” -Henry David Thoreau

23. Ralph, walking on water Life is a series of little deaths out of which life always returns. - Charles Feidelson, Jr.

24. Rose, Galen, and Peter Smith Fairbanks, Alaska, 1954 The world's great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn. - John Davies. 1570-1626

25. “Ice Window’s East” Mary Mullen “The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.” -Sir Francis Bacon

26. “Snow Comp 2” Colin Bosch “This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere: the dew is never all dried at once: a shower is forever falling: vapor ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on seas and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.” -John Muir

27. “Snowy Branches” Mary Mullen And for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms.... For summer being done, all things stand upon them with a weather-beaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hue. - William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1650

28. Log cabin, Deep River Ontario, by Bob Park’s dad (194?) If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome. Anne Bradstreet (1612 - 1672), 'Meditations Divine and Moral,' 1655

29. “Lake Mendota” Mary Mullen “Like a great poet, nature knows how to produce the greatest effects with the most limited means.” -Heinrich Heine

30. “Squirrel Visitor” Dorothy Krause "Hear! hear!" screamed the jay from a neighboring tree, where I had heard a tittering for some time, "winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel, if you know where to look for it." ~Henry David Thoreau, 1858 journal entry

31. Snowman at Barb and Bob Park’s house It snowed and snowed, the whole world over, Snow swept the world from end to end. A candle burned on the table; A candle burned. Author: Boris Pasternak Source: Doctor Zhivago

32. Jeff Studdaroot, giving rides at dog races, Fairbanks, March 1953 Galen Smith The flowers of late winter and early spring occupy places in our hearts well out of proportion to their size. - Gertrude S. Wister

33. “Winter Coneflowers” Mary Mullen I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show. ~Andrew Wyeth

34. Photo by Ralph Tyksinski The trees down the boulevard stand naked in thought, Their abundant summery wordage silenced, caught In the grim undertow; naked the trees confront Implacable winter's long, cross-questioning brunt. -D. H. Lawrence, -Winter in the Boulevard, 1916

35. “Swing set” Mary Mullen There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you.... In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself. ~Ruth Stout

36. “Early Snowfall” Dorothy Krause “There is nothing in the world more beautiful than the forest clothed to its very hollows in snow. It is the still ecstasy of nature, wherein every spray, every blade of grass, every spire of reed, every intricacy of twig, is clad with radiance.” -Fiona Macleod

37. “There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture on the lonely shore, there is a society where none intrudes, by the deep sea and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but nature more.” -Lord Byron “Cold Forest” Colin Bosch “Cold Forest” Colin Bosch

38. Reindeer Ride, Fairbanks, March 1953 Galen Smith Every gardener knows that under the cloak of winter lies a miracle... a seed waiting to sprout, a bulb opening to the light, a bud straining to unfurl. And the anticipation nurtures our dream. - Barbara Winkler

39. “If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.” -Rachel Carson Jim and Robert Park, Deep River, Ontario

40. “Birdbath” Mary Mullen Winter is the time for comfort - it is the time for home. - Edith Sitwell

41. "Prairie broom hockey game" The people in the center are Gary Giorgi (who is still listed as a Prairie member though I haven't seen him at Prairie for some time), Katrina Schroeder and Ian Park. I don't know who the photographer was, perhaps Carl Wacker. (photo and info provided by Bob Park)

42. “Trail” Mary Mullen The tedious part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood. ~ John Burroughs ~ The Snow-Walkers

43. Frosted blooms, by Bob Park In the bleak midwinter Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak midwinter, Long ago. - Christina Rossetti, A Christmas Carol

44. Winter at the Tyksinsky’s Shed no tear - O, shed no tear! The flower will bloom another year. Weep no more - O, weep no more! Young buds sleep in the root's white core. - John Keats

45. “Snow Ridge” Mary Mullen “In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.” -Aristotle

46. Powderhorn Park, Minneapolis, by Bob Park In a way Winter is the real Spring - the time when the inner things happen, the resurgence of nature. - Edna O'Brien

47. “The Sun Came Out” Colin Bosch Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, seems nowhere to alight: the whited air hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, and veils the farmhouse at the garden's end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit around the radiant fireplace, enclosed in a tumultuous privacy of storm. Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson Source: The Snow-Storm

48. “Park Patches” Mary Mullen For the ignorant, old age is as winter; for the learned, it is a harvest. - Jewish Proverb

49. Dog races, Fairbanks March 1953 Galen Smith February is merely as long as is needed to pass the time until March. - Dr. J. R. Stockton

50. “Snowy Lilac” Mary Mullen “Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.” -Henry David Thoreau

51. Front yard snow works, by Bob Park Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius. ~Pietro Aretino

52. From hot tub to snow angel (photo taken the morning after) Dorothy Krause “The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.” -Albert Einstein

53. Original Prairie site in winter, by Bob Park “To see a world in a grain of sand, and a Heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.” -William Blake

54. “Oak Leaf” Mary Mullen One leaf left on a branch and not a sound of sadness or despair. One leaf left on a branch and no unhappiness. One leaf left all by itself in the air and it does not speak of loneliness or death. One leaf and it spends itself in swaying mildly in the breeze. - David Ignatow

55. Ralph Tyksinski The cold was our pride, the snow was our beauty. It fell and fell, lacing day and night together in a milky haze, making everything quieter as it fell, so that winter seemed to partake of religion in a way no other season did, hushed, solemn. - Patricia Hampl

56. The Ridges Sanctuary, Door County Photo by Galen Smith The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. - Robert Frost

57. “Wisconsin Valley Pink” Mary Mullen Every mile is two in winter. ~George Herbert

58. “Winter Wonderland” Colin Bosch Every winter, When the great sun has turned his face away, the earth goes down into a vale of grief, and fasts, and weeps, and shrouds herself in sables, leaving her wedding- garlands to decay– Then leaps in spring to his returning kisses. - Charles Kingsley

59. St Elias Range from south of Bear Creek Pass, Yukon Territory, Alaska on the Alcan Highway. December 1952 Galen Smith In the sheltered heart of the clumps last year's foliage still clings to the lower branches, tatters of orange that mutter with the passage of the wind, the talk of old women warning the green generation of what they, too, must come to when the sap runs back. - Jacquetta Hawkes

60. “Lace, close” Mary Mullen Turn down the noise. Reduce the speed. Be like the somnolent bears, or those other animals that slow down and almost die in the cold season. Let it be the way it is. The magic is there in its power. - Henry Mitchell

61. “Yule at First UU” Dorothy Krause Winter, a lingering season, is a time to gather golden moments, embark upon a sentimental journey, and enjoy every idle hour. - John Boswell

62. “Tracks” Mary Mullen These Winter nights against my window-pane Nature with busy pencil draws designs Of ferns and blossoms and fine spray of pines, Oak-leaf and acorn and fantastic vines, Which she will make when summer comes again-- Quaint arabesques in argent, flat and cold, Like curious Chinese etchings. ~ Thomas Bailey Aldrich

63. “Birch with Hoarfrost” Fairbanks, Galen Smith And for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms.... For summer being done, all things stand upon them with a weather-beaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hue. Author: William Bradford

64. “Yule Tree, with lit candles” Dorothy Krause I believe that the beloved St. Nicholas, old St. Nick - Santa Claus, was the first saint recognized for the true miracles of generosity and compassion, rather than for martyrdom. - unknown

65. “Cardinal and Suet” Mary Mullen Sweet bird! thy bow'r is ever green, Thy sky is ever clear; thou hast no sorrow in thy song, No winter in thy year. - John Logan, 1748 - 1788

66. Rose Smith Cookie Houses

67. Wishing everyone a blessed and joyous holiday season, a happy Solstice, and a very magical winter!!