In "Where the World Began" Margaret Laurence is saying that the land she grew up in, the Canadian prairies, is lodged deep in her soul and has stayed with her throughout her life. Laurence counters stereotyped images of the Prairies as "dull, bleak, flat uninteresting" by describing how magnificent the Prairies were in winter, in summer; by describing the eccentrics in her town; by indicating that it was a place also inhabited by the dead (ancestors); and by expressing her love for the Canadian land and how it has remained planted in her soul.
Laurence describes the marvellous activities and sights that took place in winter in the Prairies. She remembers as a child, hitching rides on the back of the milk sleigh, with the rider of the milk sleigh grinning at the children through his great frosted moustache, commanding the horses to quicken their pace, challenging the children to hang on. It was a thrilling activity, and Laurence describes it vividly, in lots of details; the children's moccasins were "squeaking and slithering on the hard rutted snow of the roads", their "hands in ice-bubbled mitts hanging onto the box edge of the sleigh for dear life" (Laurence, 55). Laurence also describes what the young people would do when there was a blizzard and school was cancelled. They would happily put on their snowshoes and then wander for miles through the snowy landscape, "the white dazzling deserts" (Laurence, 56), trying to learn more about nature. When they returned, if it was too close to nighttime, they sometimes heard coyotes, the sounds of which might be real or simply imagined. Laurence also describes the wonders of nature during the wintertime, such as the Northern Lights. There were also the frost feathers on windows with their marvellous patterns: "the ferns and flowers and eerie faces traced there during the night by unseen artists of the wind" (Laurence, 55).
Winter was a magical time, and so too was summer.
