Fear is a devil hard to cast out.
Let me make the most of the winter adventures that I recall.

First, there was sleighing.

We never kept horses of our own, but the horses of our customer-guests were always at our disposal, and many a jolly ride they gave us, with the dvornik at the reins, while their owners haggled with my mother in the store about the price of soap.

We had no luxurious sleigh, with cushions and fur robes, no silver bells on our harness.

Ours was a bare sledge used for hauling wood, with a padding of straw and burlap, and the reins, as likely as not, were a knotted rope.