Flying home to Washington from a Christmas in Santa Monica, the flat farmland — once wild prairie — in between had a rough snow-dusted beauty.

And it took me back: "No light and no cry could reach through a storm that had wild voices and an unnatural light of its own."

The land beckoned to me, an avid reader of Laura Ingalls Wilder's artfully told tales of her pioneer girlhood. From a family of sisters, I found that her family of Ma, Pa and four sisters always held charms, charting a way to live in a vast white winter wilderness — especially at Christmas, circa 1880, when the land was wide open to claims by homesteaders willing to work it.

The air was soft Christmas Day, the weather warm enough for a beach walk before dinner. I even went in the water, getting in touch with my inner California girl. It did me a world of refreshing good, being at home in my hometown again.

Our family of three sisters at Christmas, circa now, involved Ugg boots, a Burberry coat, Starbucks gift cards, stark branches that looked snow-capped, and a choice of five pies for dessert. Store-bought Sweet Lady Jane's mixed berry went fast. Homemade harvest pie went slow. That was mine.

The 3-year-old seemed to eat more of everything than anyone at the Christmas table. We were 15 gathered around my parents' dining room, grateful to be there. There was no Ma and Pa, but my parents, whose piping grandchildren call them by their first names, "Richard" and "Judy." How do you like that?

If we still lived in Wilder's lost world, my parents might dance a jig at the square dance. If we still lived in that world, we girls would sew muslin and lace by the fire at night. If we still lived there, we'd cover our ears to hide the sound of a pig squealing as it was butchered. Baking a pie would be second nature, not done just at the holidays. And a brown bear might be poking at the barn door.

The Ingalls family had hardships to contend with all the year through, but the author captures the poetry of certain moments. Ma sends two daughters out with a jug of ginger-water to give to Pa, who was under the sun cutting hay. "Such a treat made that ordinary day into a special day, the first day Laura had helped with the haying."

An ancient Indian warns the pioneers that it will be a fierce winter. Sure enough, an early September prairie frost, an October prairie blizzard and a frozen lake are only the start of a long seven-month winter for the Ingalls and the little town they live near. It's a worrisome topic of conversation as the Pa sits with his fiddle by the fire and says how strange it to see no ducks or geese in hunting season. Then he plays a tune like, "The Old Gray Mare, She Ain't What She Used to Be."

Salt pork, dribbled with molasses, and baked beans are the mainstay of family dinners for weeks and months, and the family is down to precious preserves and rations by the time a meager Christmas comes round. A dark cloud in the northwest that very night becomes a huge storm that "came with a shriek" and shook the house.

The town is buried so deep in snow that trains carrying supplies can't reach it all winter. So deep that the sisters can't go to school. So desperate was the shared plight that the townsmen went out hunting antelope on the frozen plain. Two young brothers risked their lives — and their fine horses — to dash for wheat far across the prairie.

I have some Wisconsin blood and fancy myself resilient. My family gets along fine, but you have to wonder how you'd survive such togetherness without getting on each other's nerves. The prospect of dying of hunger in bitter cold is very different than lunching and shopping on Montana Avenue for Christmas pies and presents.

Somehow, theirs made ours possible.

To find out more about Jamie Stiehm, and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com