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# A Home For the Night
- URL: https://tombeaverbooks.ghost.io/a-home-for-the-night/
- Published: 2026-10-05T19:55:43.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-08T03:47:45.000Z
- Author: Tom Beaver
- Tags: Book: Movies And TV, #Import 2026-10-09 17:51

ITEM-META

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> GUESTREADABLE: xxx  
> RSTATUS: xxx  
> ESTATUS: xxx  
> CHAPSECTIONNAME: xxx  
> CHAPORDER: xxx  
> ITEMCHAPNAME: *Year 2021*  
> ITEMORDER: *xxx*  
> ITEMTYPE: xxx  
> ITEMSOURCE: MoviesAndTV\_v3f.vellum  
> ITEMNOTE: xxx  
> ITEMINTRO: *x*xx

StorySubtitle: March 10, 2021

In *Little House on the Prairie*, the Ingalls family is heading home from an exciting visit to big town of Mancado. As wonderful as that town was, home is better. Laura misses her dog, Jack. The miles are long with impatience, happy with anticipation. 

They encounter a marshal and two others on horseback. This posse warns of a coming blizzard, advises the travelers to seek shelter and seek it fast. It’s been cozy for girls, riding in the back of the covered wagon, and for Ma and Pa, sitting together up front on the buckboard. Now it starts getting windy and cold. Carolyn climbs in with the girls, hugs the baby close, the two bigger girls hugging for warmth. Snow starts to fall. The wagon passes between two close-growing large trees. could this be shelter enough? But no, the trees are insufficient. The family continues on. The snow falls faster, grows deep on all sides. The sky grows grayer and lower. 

The travelers come to a log cabin, abandoned. They rush inside with their blankets and pillows, their tool box, their supplies, their reddened faces. They quickly spread a blanket on the floor against a wall. Laura gets down in the covers, huddling with the baby to warm it, while her older sister, Mary, builds a fire in the big fireplace, using up all the firewood. The girls ask, “What if it *is* a blizzard,” and Ma says, “We’ve been through cold weather before.”

Ma busts up a wooden box with the hammer they’ve brought, uses the boards to cover an open window. The door flies open, rammed by the wind. Mary and Ma push it shut again, laughing. They settle in to wait for Pa, who has gone back out in the weather to find firewood

In swirling, howling snow at the edge of the woods Pa labors, chopping a ten foot section from a fallen tree. He hitches the horse and they haul this big log back. They pass a zigzag rail fence, which would have been good firewood, easy firewood, but Pa, always a considerate neighbor, must have told himself, “No, Charles. You can borrow a man’s house, but you can’t burn his fence.” He gets his log into the small, open barn. 

In this poor shelter, working just a few feet from the open doorway, snow lashing past, Charles uses his broad axe to chop the big log down to fire logs. From the front porch of the house, Carolyn can see her husband. And is relieved. She calls to him—supper’s ready, Charles! He husband shouts back that he wants to finish this work first. You know how cold he must be, how he must be longing for a fire and hot food and the gratitude of his family. 

At last there is a huge stack of freshly split firewood inside the cabin. A fire blazes in the fireplace. All three girls are huddled in their blankets, heading to sleep. The couple sits at a make-shift tabletop, sitting on the floor, the meal spread before them, and Charles says grace. They family is not home yet. But they are indoors for the night, with a fire and plenty of firewood, well-fed and ready for sleep, safe from the blizzard. They are weeks or months from any city, days and days from every other human, but they are five people grateful that things aren’t worse, grateful to still be safe and together on the adventure we know will be a long one. *\~ March 10, 2021*