Plain.

We traveled east again. East to the snow. East to the cozy. East to a sleepy town with a log cabin I love like home. A cabin in the woods next to a river that has frozen banks this time of year. Three feet of snow blanketed the ground and we spent our three days there walking paths in the snow that are so familiar I can describe the frozen ground underneath right down to the clump of grass and the spots where the chipmunks leave their strewn about pine-cones. There are no phones there, no computers or internet or wifi. Even our cells can't quite reach full service so only a few messages spatter in randomly and unpredictably. We spent silent hours with the snow softly falling building an igloo, making a frozen fire outside and sledding down the walking path. We stood on the banks of the river and admired the cold, black water rushing by. We read and slept and played. Parker had a terrible cough and was up each night for most of the night coughing and coughing. He managed his days on just a couple of hours of sleep, but the beauty that surrounded us plodded on and made those difficult nights seem easier away than in the comfort of our home. In a house that needs a fire to be stoked through the middle of the night, or the temperature inside dips down into the 20's, it seems natural to stay up all night, holding a sick boy while cuddled under an antique wool blanket. There's more to come and I've divided our time into snippets to share over the next couple of days.