Saturday, December twenty-eighth.
For the first time in days the sun has risen in a clear sky and shone upon the mountains across from us. It is colder, for ice has formed again on the tub of water out-of-doors. But there is a little wind.
I am writing in preparation for Olson’s trip. He too is making ready. Food for the foxes is on the stove for many days’ feeding, his engine gets a little burnishing—it’s no insignificant voyage to Seward in the winter. If only it holds out fair and calm until a steamer comes! There’s the hitch now. We have seen none go to Seward since the first of the month.
To-morrow probably the Christmas tree must come down. The hemlock trimmings shed all over the cabin till to-day I tore them out. Last night we had our final lighting of the tree. Rockwell and I stood out-of-doors and looked in at it. What a marvelous sight in the wilderness. If only some hapless castaways had strayed in upon us lured by that light! We sang Christmas carols out there in the dark, did a Christmas dance on the shore, and then came in and while the tree still burned told each other stories. Rockwell’s story was about the adventures of some children in the woods, full of thrilling climaxes. It came by the yard. I told him of an Indian boy who, longing for Christmas, went out into the dark woods at night and closed his eyes. And how behind his closed eyes he found a world rich in everything the other lacked. There was his Christmas tree and to it came the wild animals. They got each a present, the mother porcupine a box of little silken balls to stick onto her quills for decoration, and the father porcupine a toothbrush because his large teeth were so very yellow. After the story it was bedtime. Well ... this fair day has passed, and with the night have come clouds and a cold gloom foreboding snow. But I have learned to expect nothing of the weather but what it gives us.